>:^v< /2^,li . f^ ■^ PRINCETON, N. J. 2J Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BL 80 .H94 Hunt, William Remfry. Heathenism under tne searchlight HEATHENISM UNDER THE SEARCHLIGHT A Buddhist Priest These Buddhist priests are mostly illiterate men. Some £.re even criminals. Others have been dedicated to the temples from childhood. Only a very few have any intelligent ideas of the Buddhist religion. They serve the temples, receive the offerings, and chant their weird calls to prayer. In some of the temples they turn a " prayer- wheel " which is packed with written petitions, and which, when revolving, offers abo jt 10,000 prayers per hour. HEATHENISM UNDER THE SEARCHLIGHT: THE CALL OF THE FAR EAST DEC 4 1 BY WILLIAM REMFRY HUNT, F.R.G.S. AUTHOR OF "facts ABOUT CHINA" ETC. WITH FOREWORD BY Rev. WILLIAM DURBAN, B.A. AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 150 NASSAU STREET NEW YORK "Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root, and practical in its fruits ; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows." Henri F. Amiel. FOREWORD By Eev. William Durban, B.A. (London) The devoted missionary, Eev. William Eemfry Hunt, is issuing Heathenism Under the Searchlight at a psychological moment. There are junctures in the history of every nation wliich are recognised by all competent observers as critical. Some such crises are decisive of the whole future national course. It is the opinion, emphatically expressed, of such supremely able experts as Sir Ernest Satow, Dr. Timothy Eichard, the Eev. William Arthur Cornaby, and Dr. Griffith John, that the Chinese people have come to the parting of the ways ; that they are emerging from the somnolent apathy in which they have been shrouded for ages receding to prehistoric times ; that they are for the first displaying a consciousness of the superior claims of Occidentalism to Orientalism in knowledge, in science, in art, in wisdom ; that they are abdicating their time-honoured attitude of arrogant assimiptiou and of superiority to all nations outside of the Middle or Flowery Kingdom ; and that for the first time they are manifesting willing eagerness to accept lessons in all departments from the representatives of modern civilisation. 5 6 FOREWORD Many students have recently formulated various opinions as to the main motives of the new Chinese policy. Probably the only legitimate conclusion is that, as all human motives are mixed, so it is in this case. Fear of foreign aggression and of piratical partition by the Gieat Powers which have been carving up continents for appropriation and annexation is surely a potent factor. But the Providence of God had anticipated the ways of the leaders of the nations, by raising up pioneers of a new moral and spiritual polity, long in advance of the move- ments of carnal and secular competitors for influence over the venerable nationality. The twentieth century began with the tremendous awakening of new political forces in China and Japan ; but the nineteenth century had commenced with the vast uprising of the system of modern missions which inaugurated a new Pentecost. China is starting to its feet to stand up for its inde- pendence; but the Bible translated into its own tongue is the first object that it grasps with its newly nerved hands. " China for Christ ! " is the cry of China's own native Christian Church, born under the blessed auspices of nineteenth-century missionary enterprise, and baptized at the close of that century in the blood of Chinese Christian martyrs. Those who have studied the history of nations well understand that when any community has had its religious Keformation before its political Eevolution, the nation has been saved. If the Eevolution comes first, with fire and blood, the Reformation is likely to fail. FOREWORD 7 Britain accepted the Eeformation, and so it passed safely through revohitionary throes afterwards. France fatally reversed the order. Now the most crucial problems of " Welt-Politik" have their focus in the Far East. Is China to be civilised before it is Christianised ? The great Churches of the West have decided that this must not be permitted. A Far Eastern national lienaissance without the grace of God is an appalling contingency. The object of this booklet is to prove the truth of this proposition. The accomplished missionary author belongs to that select band of missionary-litterateurs who, while toiling assiduously in their arduous field, are willing and able to enlighten us in the West concerning their exploitation of the time conditions of paganism. Much has been written by sciolists in disparagement of the claims of the heathen world upon Christendom. Any simple recital of actual facts such as those contained in the following: pages aims a fatal blow at that specious Ethnic Theory which is in favour with certain schools of rationalists. It might more aptly be termed the Ethnic Superstition. It professes to derive itself from ethnology by scientific induction. It declares that Buddhism is perfectly adapted to the idiosyncrasy of the Chinese, Burmese, Singalese, and Tibetan races ; that Brabmanism is exactly suited to the Hindu temperament ; and that Islam is the proper cult for the Turks, Persians, and Arabians. Those who only indulge in dilettante studies may be deluded by this so-called " religious philosophy of nationalities," 8 FOREWORD But workers for God who are imbued with the true " enthusiasm of humanity " comprehend how such theories mock cruelly at the profound needs of the nations that sit in darkness. China includes twenty mighty provinces, including the grand territory called Manchuria. It also owns vast Mongolian and Tibetan appanages. The most recently published census of the population gives the total number of people in the twenty provinces as 426,000,000. Here we find one quarter of the world's population in an area which is only one-twelfth of the whole. Surely in some special aspects China is the most important mission field on earth. For if China becomes Christian, all Asia must gravitate to the Cross of Christ. And if, on the other hand, China should remain pagan while adopting modern civilisation, it must as a military Power threaten the world as did the Tartar host in the early Middle Ages. History contains lurid pages relating to the Tartar devastation, and these are followed by the terrible sequel of the Moslem deluge that almost submerged Europe. Such histories are trivial in comparison with those which would be enacted if the world should be destined to witness an uprising of Asia cultured by Western learning but unconquered by Christianity. Mr. Hunt's pages must convince any dispassionate reader that the time has come for a vast reinforcement of the missionary agency. Heathenism has no resources in itself for national recuperation. No pagan people can spontaneously originate its own resuscitation or its own FOREWORD 9 resurrection. The stimulus must come from without. Japan would never have stirred from its feudalism of three thousand years but for the impact of America, initially applied by Commodore Perry fifty years ago. India would have continued to cherish its Juggernaut regime, if Carey, Marshman, and "Ward had not gone forth from England to Bengal. One hundred years ago, Morrison stepped on the shores of China, and planted there the Cross which persecution has not been able to uproot. The crusade thus commenced is winning victories all along the line. H.U.S. B AUTHOR'S IXTRODUCTIOX The information herein compiled is a mere (luota to tlic greater contribution of evidences which might be amassed under the title of this book. It is at one and the same time a statement and an appeal. From its particular view-point it represents the needs and the call of the awakening East. In close toucli with the Chinese in all classes of society, and in association with the respective exponents of their religions, together with a close study of their classic literature among the native students, we have, with profound emotion and sad and thoughtful heart, been enabled to get an actual time-focus on the existing conditions. It is a long way from the land of Sinim to our beautiful Lake district. The contrast is beyond descrip- 12 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION tion. In this quiet and restful oasis, while rejuvenating and generating power — the muse moved me to write. No thoughtful student of current human history can fail to be impressed with the magnitude of the changes which, in China, to-day represent nothing less than an intellectual revolution. It is the harbinger of a new life. The horizon is aglow with vivid signals. It is evident that God is about to do a ncio thing in China ! New and superior movements arc affecting moral, political, and industrial centres. Never did such splendid opportunities present themselves to the Church. In this pivotal moment the vision of an awakening Church inspires me to write ; and the contemplation of it thrills the heart ! Under the shades of overhanging willows on the lovely Windermere, and while listening to the lapping of the waves along its shores, and as our boat swings lazily to the tide on the calm, deep, unruffled waters, AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 13 it is hard to think that a subject like the contents of this book could be possible in such a beautiful world. As the breezes stir and rustle the leaves and flowers, and the sweet songsters of birdland warble their notes, the aroma of sweet-scented evergreens and balsams sifts through the air ; and amid the pines, and elms, and ash groves are scenes of wild romance, dotted with homes of ancient peace. It is as the hushing awe of one of Nature's moods that precurses a storm. Our boat rocks by gentle ripples of little tides that come from unseen depths. The horizon is darkening, and threatening battalions of lowering clouds cause the trees to bend low and moan the music of the forests. Is not this symbolic of the portentous silence pre- ceding the avalanche which is even now ready to thunder fatefully from the heights of heathenism ? It is the last rally-charge of an ancient and defiant foe. Its final onslaught against the thin and scattered divisions of Christianity has made imperative the grand union of the conquering Church, and the whole line is advancing in a new, united and strategic formation ; while from every 14 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION direction trumpets of conquest and paeans of victory are reaching our ears — "He is sounding fortli the trumpet that can never call retreat, Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet ; Our God is marcldng on ! " W. R. H. CONTENTS CHAP. I. II. III. IV. V, VI. VII. VIII. IX. FOREWORD BY REV. WILLIAM DURBAN, B.A. author's INTRODUCTION . THE NIGHT OF ASIA THE BLIGHT OF ASIA INDEXES THAT TELL LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT A STRATEGIC KEY SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL THE ETERNAL PURPOSE . rioi 5 11 19 31 49 59 73 87 99 111 129 »s LIST OF ILLUSTRATIOXS a bcddhist priest " to an unknown god " "these be thy gods" a chinese pariah three veteran missionaries to china imperial tablet commending suicide of virtuous widows virgin and babe (from the planisphere at dendera in EGYPT) ...... CHRISTIAN GIRLS IN THE " DOOR OF HOPE" HOME . BLINDFOLDED IDOLS ..... SKETCH MADE FROM AN X-RAY PHOTO OF A CHINESE WOMAN'S FOOT ...... "inasmuch" ...... CHINESE "golden LILIES " .... FOR THE RECEPTION OF "UNWELCOME BABIES " IN CHINA WAITING !...... FAQB Frontispiece 24 24 40 64 64 69 80 96 105 116 116 136 136 H.U.S. 17 THE NIGHT OF ASIA '9 "We are living in a time when a great and awful dawn is whitening above horizons which have been shrouded in twilight and night, and vast outlines of psychological truth are now appearing."— Rev. J. H. Jowett, M.A. HEATHENISM UNDER THE SEARCHLIGHT THE NIGHT OF ASIA Night-Lights of Heathendom. — The classic literature of Asia is ricli in fancy and rare in thought. Eastern teachers tell us that only cultivated eyes can see its beauties, and sympathetic hearts feel its peculiar inspira- tion. It is true that there is much food for reflection in the works of their poets, sages, artists, and bards. But while there is much to charm and attract sympathetic attention towards "lower levels" and "different species" among these Asian peoples, there is much more to sadden us when we see their cold, loveless, soulless, and hopeless lives. It is still more pitiful when we discover in all their systems and rude beliefs, the chilling, withering fact that with them religion bears little or no relation to conduct. If we penetrate into the sanctum sandoruin in the archives of Chinese literature, we shall find much that 22 THE NIGHT OF ASIA has been termed " ethics suffused with emotion." We shall find altars where " strange fire " has been offered. In their primitive conceptions the Chinese seem, despite their cumbrous literature, to have sought for the Divine in the five elements — ores, woods, water, fire, and soil. Beyond the evidence of tlie senses their earliest religions did not care to speculate. Hence the development of the grosser forms of idolatry, as witness the 4,000,000 heathen deities and the 300,000 temples which are scattered to-day among tlie teeming millions. Dead Stars. — Heathenism is the night of Asia. It has been, too, such a wide, deep, black, and long night. Across its dark dome tlie stars are few and far between. It is only " by kind permission," or when poetic licence may so sanction, that we may call their lights " stars." They remind us of one of the lessons in astronomy which teach that there are many dead stars, which, having of themselves died out, yet seem to emit a little light. This illusion is explained in the fact of the immense distance between them and our planet, and that it takes centuries of years for the light which once shone out to reach our earth. " Were a star quenched on higli, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky. Shine on our mortal sight." So in our sympathetic approach to these great and wonderful races in the Far East, we are led to the thought, and even to the conviction, that the souls of men, like the continents of earth, have their darkness and their light. Night and day are common to all kingdoms. Lights differ from one another in glory, the more brilliant lights briglitening our day, and the lesser 24 "To an Unknov/n God" Amid mountain fastnesses and the sacred groves may be seen these pathetic little altars. The devotees tell us the shen (spirit) may come suddenly to this temple. It is open to all deities. Lest they should miss the ideal way in the worship of their millions of gods, the people have set up these additional altars, if haply they might find the truth. " 1 hese be thy gods " This is a typical representation of one of China's demons. It is one of the most popular gods in the empire. This grotesque monster is said to have power over calamities caused by fire. It is built of mud, straw, and lime-plaster, and painted in keeping with its terrible form. Offerings to it are supposed to prevent fires presumably caused by carelessness or by the lightning of retribution. •'LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT" 25 lights guidiDg and helping us through our night. So we may use the analogy : these lesser lights are only the accommodations before the dawn — " lesser, as the stars seem lesser than the sun, only because our eyes are not strong enough to see them as they really are — these God gives us to lighten the soul's night." Religious science seems to be a common possession of mankind. Whether studied among the rude and lower races, or seen iu its peculiar settings and cherished reverence among more cultivated peoples, it presents the greatest charm, the most solemn opportunities, and withal the surest method of gaining an understanding of man in his home, by his shrines, or in the street ; and further- more, gives us the best view of his national, rational, and natural cliaracteristics. The Cradle of Nations. — Asia seems to have been a chosen field fur tlie birthplace of nations, races, languages, and religions. Just as the radiations of the science of language are toward one original speech, so the radiations of history, ethnology, and philology point toward the region of the Euphrates, and the plains of Mesopotamia, as being the birthplace of the parent language and the cradle of the human race. This should make the study of the religious systems and philosophies of the East one of no mean importance. Indeed, without a knowledge of the existing conditions in these far Eastern fields of religious origins, beginnings, and first principles, one is not able to understand the situation or suggest remedial measures. Like the Chinese racial characteristics, their classic and sacred systems are mysterious and vague in their origins. This is one of the places where there is no sure data, and one in his erudite research is reminded of the pilot's H.U.S. D 26 THE NIGHT OF ASIA call at sea : " No bottom ! " They have not only lost their historic origins in the mists of legend where revela- tion and speculation are undistinguishable, but they have missed their own purpose, besides losing the track and force of their original commission and intention. No romance, however, is more fascinating to the candid student of social and religious life than are the actual surprises which meet him at every turn in the road in the realms of religious groves, pagan shrines, temples, and the altars by sacred mountains. It is there you may obtain a diagnosis of man at the best side of his worst nature, and at the worst side of his best ideals. Early Religious Ideas. — One walks with reverence and with pity among the ruins of these great sweeping terraces, amid the broken amphitheatre of their cherished beliefs. One is almost bewitched with wonder at the altar ruins that lie everywhere, and which are covered with mildew and moss. Amid these overgrowths of centuries are found records of priests, sacrifices, and a whole churchyard of ritual which lie like ugly bulbs and uuweeded gardens all about us. It is only the spiritu- ally minded soul that is able in love to discern germ and flower, height and depth ; and it is given to such to see that "Heaven's most beauteous fruits and blossoms Are but growths from seeds of earth." Of course, there is a value appraisement in all these contributions to truth. They are partial truths, lone letters in the religious alphabet, mysterious thought- images and idea-pulsations, in which, amid its congeries of superstitions and ethical debris, one finds fact and mythus undistinguishable, imperfect moulds and rude "AMID TH' ENCIRCLING GLOOM" 27 shapings, here a little light but no life, here a ray of hope, and there banks of thick credulity. There is no certain ground, no basic bed-rock of truth, no sure word of prophecy, no hope of pardon from the awful burden of inexpiable guilt, no Holy Spirit, no articulate revelation, no inherent inspiration, no Divine warrant, no burning bush or even a still small voice. In explaining their spiritual fancies many of the exponents of these " broken systems " claim that they feel and experience the pre- sentiment of " subtile pulsations, aromas, temperatures, mites, and filaments of characterisation, which seem to flood out to them from the shores of another sphere, and beckon them to ' cross the bar.' " Yes, when it is seen that among the millions of Asia — the now awakening Asia — there is the capacity to conceive of some spiritual ideas and ideals, there should arise in our hearts the profoundest gratitude to God that amid the gloom — the world's dark night — " God hath not left Himself without a witness." Emerson is kind and prophetic when he says : "No whisper of tlie Holy Ghost, This heedless world has ever lost." Voices in the Dark. — The man of Uz voiced the one aching desire of all his brother human beings when he cried, " Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! " In all continents man looks out toward a power beyond his own. This involves awful and profound mysteries. It suggests within man the intuitive recognition of the universal Fatherhood, and on the other hand, by logical sequence, is, at least, an adumbration of the universal brotherhood. Nor should it be strange that the creature should thus lift its eyes to the Creator. Man groping 28 THE NIGHT OF ASIA after God is as pathetic as the fact that God's seeking and reaching after man is Divine. It presents one of the most touching facts of life.^ Man is a religious being. He must worship. He is constrained to pray. He is moved to sacrifice. Voices in wilderness and thicket, signs of fire by night and cloud by day are to him more than fancied affinities to his higher nature. His intense desire to penetrate the dark veil of futurity and peer away into the endless life, is inborn and intuitive. He seeks and must have, if even by a via media, audience with his God. Every- where, and in all directions, man's thoughts climb away from him in the direction of the Infinite. They express "The longings after something lost. The spirit's yearning cry ; The striving after better hopes — These things can never die. " Signposts Skyward. — It will be seen, therefore, that most of these ethnic faiths and unscientific systems have been preparatory, provisional, and transient. Some have been utterly useless- and injurious. Most of them were disciplinary and local. Each speaks in the language, dresses in the style, and lives the life of its native air. One is reminded of the figure of a long line of street lamps along the world's dark night. Man is a long way from home, and is lost. Each lamp is of value only until its declining rays announce the value of its succeeding lamp ; so these ancient religious ^ "There is no god whom I have not honoured ; the incarnate one is not equal to the occasion ; the High Sovereign does not come to our aid." — Vide Shih King, iii. 24. "Every man is groping after the way of life."— Lucretius. "LEAD THOU ME ON" 29 night-lights have been set up and cared for l)y the appointed watchmen on their assigned beats : and who shall dare say tliat any light in a dark place is not a benediction ? Thus the Hindoo finds his instrument and illuminant in his Hymn of the JRifj Veda, the Cliiuese in their Kings or classics, the Buddhists in their TriiyitCilca, the Parsees in the Gdthds of their Zencl- avesta, the Moslems in their Koran, the magicians of Egypt in their multiple and conflicting 'ologies, the Jew in the Law and the Prophets, and the Christian in the New Testament — all these, witli the single exception of the Christian scriptures, ask the eternal question and leave the eternal doubt, as they ask : "Is there a bright home skyward. Where naught that blooms sliall die ? " To be able to solve these sericius problems is to be placed at one and the same time in the position of a debtor, and that of a steicard. In the light of these facts, what an immense responsibility — individual and col- lective — rests upon the units of the whole Church of Christ. Holding, as the custodians and stewards, the saving power and redeeming life of the Gospel in its hands, what awful consequences rest upon it should the certainties, light, and realities of the Word be kept back from those who sit in darkness and grope in the shadow of death ! " Deitii with his own right hand points out our way." — Aratus. " There is scarcely a religion in which relics or surmises of the unity of God are not contained. Traces of this unity are : among the Hindoos, Brahma or Dyaus ; among the Germans, Thio or Zio ; among the Chinese, Tien ; among the Etruscans, Tina ; among the Persians, Ormuzd ; among the Semites, Chon ; among the Chaldeans and Greeks, Fate." — Dorner. II THE BLIGHT OF ASIA 3> " In the course of two years 1 travelled 8000 miles in inland China, and visited seventy-three mission stations. Everywhere small communities of Christians had been formed, who, by their abandonment of ancestral worship and idolatrous social customs, were subjected to social ostracism. These converts live proper and honest lives, they are teachable, greedy of Bible knowledge, and generous and anxious to preserve the purity of the church. After eight and a half years of journeyings among Asiatic peoples, I say unhesitatingly that the raw material out of which the Holy Ghost fashions the Chinese convert, and ofttimes the Chinese martyr, is the best stuff in Asia."— The late Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, F.R.G.S. II THE BLIGHT OF ASIA Many years ago, while in Japan, we made the ascent towards one of Japan's most famous volcanoes, and lodged at a small village called Karuizawa. It is situ- ated at the base of the largest active volcano in Japan, and is called Asama-yama (the Mountain of the Morn- ing). The surrounding cities seem as minute paradises built near a crater. The earth rings hollow at a blow. AU around us lay cinders. Xear by is a boiling, hissing, inferno-like spring. The air is charged with sulphuric fumes. In the midst of beautiful scenery rises a column of dense black smoke and steam. The rolling of lava jars on the music of summer, and the scent of summer mingles with the aroma of roses and chrysanthemums. Never for a moment can the traveller forget that beneath all this opulence of power, colour, and fragrance rages a colossal furnace. So we were reminded of the harsh- ness, selfishness, cruelty, homelessness, and infidelity found beneath the eloquence and poetry of these non- Christian systems ; and it robs us of all the joy in their rare gifts, for we can yield homage only to the greatness that is also goodness. Heathenism is the blight of Asia. — The fairest gardens of the Orient are stricken with its black rot. It repre- H.U.S. 33 E 34 THE BLIGHT OF ASIA sents a diseased moral condition. There is only one remedy — eradication ! The debris of Confucian, Bud- dhistic, and Taoistic systems is as the parasitic smut and worm dust of the East. In lands where every prospect pleases and only man is vile, this moral blight has not only to be destroyed, but buried deep in its grave, and the humanity endangered by it kept in careful quarantine. When the old foresters of Europe found that the dis- eased oak stumps and dead roots were a fertile source of infection to the new root stock, they decided it was the part of wisdom to dig them out and burn them. The lesson is patent. It is not a case where the gardener can prune off a few excrescences and let the sick plant grow. The grubs and deterrents in the infected and diseased moral systems of the East must be rooted out. There is little of value in paganism, either in its creeds or practices, to be utilised, adapted, or adopted. The testimony of the late Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, F.R.G.S., is given in the following words : — " One thing which is painfully impressive is the terror which encloses the people of the East : the terror which ensnares Korea and great part of China. I allude to the terror of dead ancestors, and of what they can inflict upon them ; of demons and of the forces of nature, all of which involve systems of worship and sacrifice. In Korea, people scarcely dare to stir after the sun has set, from terror of demons who inhabit the earth, fire, and water ! " Heathenism is hugely deficient in common sense, and awfully banki'upt in purity of motive. The sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful, is either dead or THE BLIND CAVE OF ETERNAL NIGHT 35 arrested. Its normal condition is ignorance and fear. It has trampled on the flower of sentiment and exalted the lowest passions even in its child-life. It has en- throned ignorance, crowned inferiority, tainted man's ideals, and smirched his ambitions. Soulless and Songless. — Heathenism is cheerless, soulless, and songless. Life is a mere negation, and every eddy in its dark current is magnified into a veritable maelstrom. It is faded, bloomless, dead beyond recall ! It has crushed out every upward thought, and de- stroyed the bright, imaginative faculties of the most aesthetic people in the world. In its programme the horrible rather than the gentler aspects of nature have loomed up in their minds. It has relegated God to oblivion, and given to the masses deities without number, which are inactive, impersonal, and valueless ghosts of gods. It has no sense of a Saviour going about doing good. Its idea of a god is selfish and eternal repose. Nowhere does it teach that the world is God's gift to the sons of men, to be enjoyed, governed, and subdued by them. Even of the most fragrant flowers, there is a mere dull and bleared appreciation. There is no appreciation of science and art. Its people are battling with dark enigmas, and dying less of age and disease than of the depression behind the great black curtain of death and hopelessness. The only voice of praise heard in heathendom is from the birds in the trees, and from the cattle on a thousand hills. All else is vocal with the solemn dirge that issues from " the blind cave of eternal night." As in the ancient temples of Greece and Eome, so in China, re- ligion is merely utilised, and even the gods are employed. Thieves are suppliants at the altars for assistance in 36 THE BLIGHT OF. ASIA their robberies. Legions of vulgar priesthood terrorise and dupe the people. They live as in a nightmare, and are like Frankenstein followed by his demon : "As one who on a lonely I'oad Doth walk with fear and dread, And having once looked round, walks on, And no more turns his head. Because he fears a frightful fiend May close behind him tread." The blank idiotic look in the faces of these " spiritual advisers " is pitiful to behold. They are no more in- fluenced by a moral sense than are the waves of the sea. They know no sense of sin, and feel no need of a Saviour. They teach the people to pray, not for a clean heart, but for good luck, riches, and many sons. They believe and teach that celibacy is the loftiest state, and mendicancy the highest idea of religious life. The light that is in them is darkness, and oh, how great is that darkness ! Over the doors of their temples might be written the solemn words of Dante : "All hope abandon — ye who enter here." Heathenism under the Apostle's X-ray. — That other lurid picture, drawn by an eye-witness, that great Euro-Asiatic missionary, the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, is a true representation of heathenism. Too great to be moved by the finely attenuated and ethereal fantasies of Greek and Eoman systems, the Apostle writes of them : " They are without excuse ; because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT 37 to be wise, they became fools ; and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to cor- ruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves : who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." Then follows the unspeakable list of their sensuality, wickedness, covctousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit — haters of God, maUgnant, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient, without natural affection, and immerciful. "What an awful picture ! Milton seems to have caught a glimpse of its unutterable woes when he wrote : " Black it stood as uight, Fierce as ten furies ; terrible as hell ! " A Lost Art. — This is the more apparent when it is seen that in all the farrago of nonsense in heathenism, the inner religion of revelation is a lost art, and the outer ritual of their worship looks to a dead past. This has caused spiritual stagnation, and arrested development in all phases of the nation's life. Particularly in China, Manchuria, and Korea there is an utter ignorance of Divine laws, which ignorance keeps men in slavery, and causes millions to perish from famine, pestilence, and rebellion ; and that, too, in one of the richest countries of the earth. IMillions are lost per annum through epidemics. Cities of a million inhabitants have no sewers, no water supply, no street regulations, and no organised lighting. 38 THE BLIGHT OF ASIA The filth and stenches are indigenous. The streets are steaming, stinking, and full of disease, and lepers openly sell their sweets to the children. The only scavengers are the dogs, which live with the pariahs and outcasts, and share their victuals on the streets. This is the con- dition of hundreds of crowded cities, where plague, cholera, and malignant fevers find the most congenial soil for the rapid growth of their vile germs. In a word, heathenism is like a vast lazar house " Wherein are laid Numbers of all diseased, all maladies Of ghastly spasm, and racking tortures, Of heart-sick agony, all feverish kinds, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, . And moonstruck madness." Homeless and Loveless. — There are no homes in heathendom. Even the word for " home " in the native hieroglyphics is made up of " cover " and " hog," which when placed together naturally signify a " pigsty." No higher critic would dare to assail the correctness of this derivation. From these residences pains are taken to exclude too liberal a supply of air and sunlight. Suicide is encour- aged and infanticide common. In some parts polygamy and polyandry are also practised. In the homes of the more wealthy mandarins the eunuchs have charge of the harems and zenanas, and indulge in all their effeminate and barbarous practices. Although chastity is a virtue highly praised, there is little purity and innocence in its maidenhood. What a contrast does Christendom present, where the home is the child's true paradise, and the mother its most tender minister ! 40 A Chinese Pariah An opium-eater, an outcast, vermin-covered and loathsome, he appealed to the author for help. For the compensation of a few Chinese cash he stood suspiciously before the camera. We gave him food, and spoke a few words of cheer to him ; but the light of his reason seemed to have gone out. Chinese streets are often crowded with these hopeless creatures, who are often blind and leprous. V I MOTHERLESS AND CHEERLESS 41 In Asia women are merely toys to be used as sport. In seraglio and palace they live and die in jealousy, lust, and ignorance. Motherhood is a negligible quality. There is no blossom in its child life ; and it has produced more craven-hearted men and women than are to be found anywhere outside of pagan lands. The language of the boys and girls on the streets is disgusting and obscene beyond expression. Citing a single instance in support of these facts, the following is, at least, interest- ing. One of the prominent native newspapers recently contained the following advertisement : — GIRL FOR SALE ! A girl of sixteeu, and of pleasant appearance, whose parents recently died, ofTers to sell herself, in order to raise funds to provide for their burial in becoming style. — Apply, etc. Such cases are numerous. It is not an abnormal condition in the social ana religious life of the people. But it is a sad conmientar}' on the rude delusions as well as the painful devotion in which these votaries of crude forms of religion command our sympathetic attention. The little children live in dread of the pictures of the Buddhist hells shown by the mendicant priests — exhibiting regions with lakes of blood, hills of knives, mortars for grinding sinners, tongue-puUing instruments, bridges of snakes, cauldrons of boiling oil, saws for cleaving bodies asunder, villages of wild dogs, and beds of serpents. Such a priest — a man ? — stripped of all his disguises could not be placed anywhere in Christendom without his being looked upon as a monster, or as a curiosity. In his able work on ProUems of the Far East, Lord Curzon says, in writing of the Buddhist priests : H.U.S. F 42 THE BLIGHT OF ASIA " Their piety is an illusion, and their pretensions a fraud. They are the outcasts of society. The expression on their faces is one of idiotic absorption. This is not surprising, considering that of the words which they intone scarcely one syllable do they themselves under- stand. The mass-book is a dead letter to them, for it is written in Sanscrit or Pali, which they can no more decipher than fly. The words they chant are merely equivalents in sound, and as used in Chinese are totally devoid of sense." A Buddhist proverb aptly says : " Worship the gods as if they came ; But if you don't, it's all the same." Gilded Paganism. — Heathenism is not all in the alleys and dens of China ; it is in the high places, palaces, and schools. Never once may it be termed " simple and innocent vulgarity." The literati may be ashamed of heathenism, but they are bound to it. In some of the homes of the wealthy classes the most distressing ignorance abounds. Men and women of influence and affluence are daily and nightly pursued and hunted by the ghosts of their own mental creation. Nor is this surprising when it is remembered that the Imperial Palace sanctions the annual expenditure of four hundred million ounces of silver for idolatrous practices. It is not an easy matter to dethrone heathenism, when its grossest features are yet aided, financed, and promulgated by Imperial edict ! What does it mean that two of China's highest and most liberal officials should commend the suicide of another Viceroy's eldest son before his mother's coffin ? There was also an Imperial decree issued quite recently, ordering one of the strongest '«BY THEIR FRUITS," ETC. 43 governors iu the empire to burn sticks of Tibetan incense before the dragon god of the Yellow River. Members of the Imperial Academy, princes, statesmen, and the scholar-laureate of the empire will alike tell their children that each has three souls, and that at decease one goes to the coffin, one to the ancestral tablet, and the other to the spirit world. The state religion is a mere highwav to officialdom, with all its open corruption. The students look upon its classics as a code of ethics to be memorised, and it is not im- portant that it should sustain any relation to conduct or character. It will at once be seen, therefore, that the offers of some of the Chinese universities to effect an entente cordiale with Christianity can in no way be accepted. Is it a thing thought to be possible, that Christianity can enter into an alliance with such systems as have stooped to such a final baseness as would bankrupt the art of indignation to denounce ? Instances are ever coming to the front which prove the deep hold heatlienism has, not only upon the illiterate millions, but upon the so-called dite of the empire. What shall we say of the recent action of one of the high mandarins ! It is reported in the native papers that his only daughter died. She was in love with a famous actor, and because she could not marry him, pined away. The father determined, in accordance with heathen usages, that her favourite slave-girl should accompany her into the nether world. He forthwith ordered his body- guard to beat her to death. She thereupon pleaded to be allowed to commit suicide, with opium or any other poison. The mandarin, with determination, said that this could not be, as that if she committed suicide she would 44 THE BLIGHT OF ASIA not be so free to attend her mistress. The paper, continuing the story, stated that at this juncture the mandarin became so enraged, because by the bamboo- beating process the girl died so slowly, that he himself finished the ghastly deed. This, however, is no worse an evidence of the deeply rooted pagan vices, than the record of one of the highest mandarins recently drinking the blood of a famous decapitated brigand ; but it shows what savage instincts still linger in the minds of Chinese high officials. Devotion to Heathenism. — Here is another instance of the delusion of, as well as the devotion to, heathen- ism, and it shows some pathetic sidelights of pagan life. Living in a monastery, near Hankow, where we visited her not long since, lives an aged Buddhist nun. Lao- ni-gu is ninety years of age. She is known all over the central provinces of China. Her history is one of unprecedented devotion to her cult. In early life she became a nun, took her vows and entered the monastery. Almost fanatical heroisms in penances and pilgrimages distinguished her. On one occasion, when she thought Buddha doubted her sincerity, she called upon him, with an oath, to test her, even to the mutilation of her body. All at once, said the people, the idol took a deep breath (it was the breathings and the false voice of one of the priests behind the great image) and commanded, saying : " If you are a true child of the Nirvdna, take a sacrificial knife and strike off your right hand." The poor deluded woman, startled by this drastic action, called out again to ascertain of the idol if such sacrifice was imperative. The superstitious people, and the woman, being under the influence of demonoiogy, and gulled by the deceptive AT PAGAN ALTARS 45 priests, heard the voice again, and in stern tones she was commanded to cut it off. At this crisis, many interfered, hoping to appease the enraged deity. But Lao-ni-gu was taking her religion at cost price. She struck a steady blow, only half severing the hand from the wrist, the blood being spilled all round the sacrificial altar. In anguish and pain she cried : " Is this enough ? " but being assured that absolute obedience and surrender were demanded, she raised the bloody knife again, and with a well-aimed ])low and a piercing scream she laid the mutilated hand upon the floor of the temple. It is a quarter of a century since that deed was committed, but the hand still hangs about her neck, suspended by a crimson cord. She had preserved the hand in rice-alcohol and dried it in the sun, and threading it with the silken cord, has worn it ever since ! Such instances afford glimpses into the inner chambers of heathenism and show up some of the actualities of pagan life. They suggest to our minds the trenchant thought that when the millions of China know Jesus as we know and love Him, their quenchless enthusiasm and ardent devotion will bring out many glad surprises. A Buddhist Devotee. — While recently itinerating in the Chii Cheo district, in the province of Anhwei, Central China, it was our privilege to witness an instance of remarkable devotion to heathenism. A Buddhist de- votee, travel-stained, footsore, and wearied, a would-be hermit-priest of more than fifty summers, was travelling alone on a mission to Tai-shan, the high sacred mountain in the province of Shantung. One of the strangest things about the old, rugged pilgrim was his patriarchal and dignified bearing. He 46 THE BLIGHT OF ASIA might easily have passed for an incarnation of the Hindoo S'akyamuni Gautama. The priest was well marked with the insignia of his fraternity, and on his stolid yellow fa^e could be read expressions of 'determination, far-away hope, and almost heroism. He paid scant attention to my salutation, for " The vows Of Heaven were on his heart ; nor ayouM he stay, To chance liis hope on other creeds, or jjlay With shadows — till the end." It was a picture for an artist or a theme for a poet. With the golden sunset glow behind the temples on the hills, and the quiet evening landscape, the scene was thought-creating and solenm. In his hand he carried a miniature table holding an incense urn. Around his neck and over his loosely folded gown were beads and seals of secret religious significance. With dignified step he moves — one, two, three, four, five and six paces, and then makes a most reverential prostration. This was to be repeated each step of the pilgrimage — six steps and a prostration, for the entire journey of the thousand-mile-penance tour. Occasionally the prostrations were longer and the prayers more fervent. Incense was lit and kept burning. It was impossible for me to leave the scene. As he arose from one of these bowings, we politely repeated our saluta- tion, and gaining his confidence by reference to the fact that his religion and ours were not native to China, we touched a responsive chord in his heart ; and we were soon engaged in conversation. The aged pilgrim of Asia and the Christian missionary at least credited each other with sincerity. He told us that his task of thus slowly measuring worship-steps for IN SEARCH OF IMMORTALITY 47 three and a half years, through cold and heat, sunshine and storm, from sunrise to sunset, until the sacred mountain in the eastern hills was reached, would secure to him a high rank in the Buddhist coterie, and a place in the shining ranks of the immortals. With the utmost delicacy, and with the winged prayer to God for guidance and wisdom, we spoke to him of the compassionate love of God, and of man's need of salvation. The idea of a Mediator (Middleman) arrested him, as well as the character and mission of Christ as the fully accredited Saviour ; and as the light seemed at times to dawn on his clouded mind, our hopes were almost raised that he might " turn again and believe " : but he was clinging with tenacious pride to the rites, symbols, and traditions of the fathers. He had set his face towards the sacred mountain — where the fathers worshipped ; and, to that purpose, and with a persistency and con- secration that would put to shame so much of our nominal Christian endeavour, this heathen devotee pressed forward, allured by the fantastic will-o'-the-wisp lights of pagan creation. " So much stress have all visible past ages laid on worship that they have, at almost boundless expense, dedicated to it the choicest work of the sculptor, the painter, the architect, the musician, and the poet. Such temples as that of Belus at Babylon, of Isis at Memphis, of Diana at Ephesus, of Minerva at Athens, and of Jehovah at Jerusalem, are silent witnesses. Such cathedrals as those of Eome, Milan, Cologne, Moscow, and London— indeed, a host of palaces of God bestarring all Christendom, with its grand architecture and crystallised worship, seem to tempt men to worship the builders. To aid the worship for which these costly structures have been raised, have been wrought the bravest works of sculptors and painter?, from Phidias and Apelles to Angelo and Eaphael. To aid the same worship have been prepared the noblest strains of poetry and music that ever voiced human emotion, from David and Asaph to Mozart and Handel. It is a loud testimony to the exceed- ing value of worship, but it glorifies the external ; and in view of the vast needs of an unevangelised world, is too large an outlay of pains and genius and gold."— Author of Ecce Ccelum on " Religious Worship." Ill INDEXES THAT TELL H.U.S. '♦9 " I made a study of missionary work in China. I took a man-of- war and visited almost every open port in the Empire. At each of these places I visited and inspected every mission station. ... I saw the missionaries, ladies and gentlemen, in their homes. I unqualifiedly, and in the strongest language that tongue can utter, give to these men and women, who are living and dying in China, and in the Far East, my full and unadulterated commendation. In China the missionaries are the leaders in every charitable work." — Hon. Charles Denby, former United States Minister. Ill INDEXES THAT TELL There is an old Oriental proverb which says : " If you wish to be sure of your way through forest or mountain passes, then ask the man who has just come that way." There is a considerable amount of sound common- sense in this little couplet. It, at least, points to a safe, sure, and scientific method of inquiry. It calls to mind the condensation by Tennyson of the two well-known lines of Horace : "Tilings seen are weightier than things heard." Heathenism under the searchlight is an anachronism. Its own devotees are forsaking it. As a system of superstitions the enlightened are now ashamed of it. Still, as a condition, it is neither well understood, nor is it easily capable of explanation. As there are some effects that the finest artists cannot produce, and certain causes that scientists cannot trace, so there are certain phases of life in heathen lands that cannot be well described. Sometimes contradictory, often fascinating in its aesthetic forms, always thought- compelling, the little glints of half evidences that shine out of its dark chinks must be carefully studied, and a SI 52 INDEXES THAT TELL time-focus rather than a snap-shot picture be taken if equitable results are to be obtained. Like most other things, it has its negative as well as its positive side ; and the thoughtful student of races, religions, and nations will readily see that we must judge the less fortunate peoples with due respect to their heredity, education, and environment. Their systems must be tested with due regard to the time of their historic setting, and the circumstances in which they took on their colour, form, and hfe must be understood if they are to be appreciated. No Romance about it. — Since, then, in the considera- tion of this subject, facts must be the only legal tender, we shall endeavour to state in terms as plain and un- varnished as possible what heathenism has done, what it is doing, and what it proposes to do. There is no romance about it. All dreams and pictures of the fairest gardens of the Orient, with their minarets and pagodas, temples and pavilions, fountains and palaces, must be dismissed from the mind, if we are to get an actual focus on heathenism. Over its pretty landscapes, into its densely packed cities, o'er its cloud-capped hills, across its vast plains, back into those high-walled homes, into the actual conditions, and into the inner sympathies of its heart- life, among its women, children, and bread-winners, by its graveyards, schools, workshops, prisons, courts, and pantheons — aye, even into its harems we must go, in order to see, and know, and feel the sorrows of heathenism. "Tlie test of any religious, political, or educational system," says Amiel, " is the man it pro- duces." This is a scientific, logical, and natural argu- ment. In pagan lands the product is not difficult of THE PRODUCT OF HEATHENISM 53 recognition ; for in its arena of anarchy and unblusliing shame, lie the wrecks of humanity, the fools of the universe, and the derelicts of society. Heathenism is not a mere passive influence ; it is actual, defiant, and devilish. The power of its entrenched evil cannot be exaggerated. The pantheons of China, Japan, and Korea are furnished with millions of gods, some of the forms and acts attributed to which would be sufficient, in any land that claims civilisation, to send a man to prison, or sentence him to be hanged. In these things it is bestial, loveless, cruel, and without natural affection. It is, even in its best aspects, pro- foundly depraved. Its moral precepts are for the most part vague and illusory ; its few solitary sparks of truth an i^nis fatuus ; its promises a delusion ; its canons a mythology; its penalties a brut urn fid men; and its vices are writ so large in the social life, that their own votaries do not dare to give them recognition. Even amid the more religious associations of its temples and pagodas, one cannot fail to experience that refrigerating sense of the absence of love and truth. They represent cold, lonely, uncanny haunts of evil influences where the owls dwell and where the satyrs dance — "A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades." The Night of Asia. — Heathenism is the night of Asia. That immortal and classic study in Dante's Inferno is a mere dream compared with the awful actualities of pagan life. Goodness and truth are its absent quali- ties, despair its resultant condition, and der.th its total fact. Common decency would forbid too graphic a description of that part of its worship in which 54 INDEXES THAT TELL its bestiality is covered with the glamour of a religious act. All that can be conceived by filth, murder, lying, demonology with . all its canonised sin, are its natural products. Like a putrid sewer, it has become a channel for the conveyance of its own refuse. Strange enough would it seem that such a system should permeate the very heart and core of the social life of the people. Stranger still is it that the ordinary devotee will laugh at his deity, and yet fear him with the greatest superstition. Nor is it considered by the worshipper of idols to be in any sense contradictory to his moral nature that, in his eating, travel, marriage laws, theatricals, and even in his deeds and lust of blood, there is a deep and subtle religious significance. Nor do the Orientals look with any indifference on the claims of priest and temple to their generosity and sacrifice. In every province, city, and village the wealth that is spent in great heathen festivals is enormous. These are always accompanied with extravagant and awe-inspiring ceremonies. Speaking of the religious systems of the Chinese and their influence on the race, Sir Thomas Wade, whose scholarly insight, and long residence in the East, enables him to speak with authority, says : " I cannot bring myself to admit that the Chinese have a knowledge of the true God, as we understand that expression. I go farther ; if religion is held to mean more than mere ethics, I deny that the Chinese have a religion. They have indeed a cult, or rather a mixture of cults, but no creed ; innumerable varieties of puerile idolatries, at which they are ready enough to laugh, but which they dare not disregard." Incongruities. — Occasionally, and from a few popular «* WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES" 55 authors, or from the artistic pen of some tourist au galop, heathenism has been re-christened with some fantastic name, and received quite a little bolstering up. Sir Edwin Arnold was enamoured of this ethical will-o'- the-wisp. Others, flirting with the charming devotees of esoteric Buddhism, theosophy, and other vague and empty " isms " that bear the whiff of spicy breezes from the Orient, have also temporarily donned the fad and fashion, being absolutely ignorant of either the facts or fruits of these ill-bred and unscientific systems. It is one thing to write up an interesting essay on the rue and euphrasies of pagan systems, but quite another thing to see it day by day and night by night in all the naked reality of its gross and vulgar character. As from India, so from Japan, after the meeting in Chicago of " The Parliament of EeHgions," there went forth Hindoo pundits, Mohammedan mollahs, Buddhist priests, and Shinto " right reverends," to exhibit the polished shells of their religious and superstitious cults. Nor was their itinerary or propaganda in vain, when it satisfied them to know they did woo and win not a few of the moral nondescripts of America and Europe to their respective tenets. Speaking of this in an article on " The After- math of the Parliament," Dr. William Ashmore, the Nestor of China missionaries, said : " They have come back to the Orient to flaunt their garlands in the faces of Christian converts, and to boast of the triumphs they achieved at the expense and entertainment of missionary masters of art." These pundits and teachers may have returned with kindlier feelings towards the West ; they may have been won to a more sympathetic attitude towards Christianity ; but they were well convinced that they had more under- 56 INDEXES THAT TELL standing than all their teachers. It should not seem strange, therefore, that their inherent pride was in- tensified on their triumphant return to Tokio, Peking, Calcutta, and the ancient cities of Asia Minor, since they were invested with a sense of confidence and a halo of glory that was never theirs in their own lands. Like three elaborate candlesticks, the religions of China (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) stand like cold chandeliers in high places in massive temples ; but they have not substance, light, or heat, and they represent the cold and formal mythology which neither educates nor saves. Hannibal could not save Carthage ; Marcus Antonius could not save the Eoman Empire ; nor could Demosthenes save cultured Greece. Matthew Arnold said : " Brilliant Greece perished for lack of attention to conduct, steadiness, and character." China, also, became first stationary, then isolated, and finally decadent, along the same declining lines. One is reminded of that beautiful sermon of the late Phillips Brooks, on " The Candle of the Lord," in which, referring to these non-Christian systems, he says : Lamps without OiL — " They are unlighted candles ; they are the spirit of man elaborated, cultivated, finished, to its very best, but lacking the last touch of God. As dark as a row of silver lamps, all chased and wrought with wondrous skill, all filled with rarest oil, but all untouched with fire ; so dark in this world is a long row of cultivated men, set up along the corridor of some age of history, around the halls of some wise university, or in the pulpits of some stately church, to whom there has come no fire of devotion ; who stand in awe and reverence before no wisdom '•FOUND WANTING" 57 greater than their own ; who are proud and selfish, and who do not know what it is to obey." There is, indeed, a place for these broken systems that have represented the ciiltus, the external worship, the ceremonial usages, the form or body in which the idea was articulated ; and that is in a record on a cold stone slab, upon a shelf, or in a glass case in some international museum. The literature of Asia is full of the praises of heathen sages who have written upon the nature of virtue and the obligations to practise it, while their own vices showed that they had little knowledge of morals, and were, consequently, very ineffectual teachers of them to others. From the time of the foundation of the Babylonian Empu'e, all Asia seems to have lost the truth. More especially from the time in which God called Abraham out from Ur of the Chaldees, do the Gentiles seem to have been given over to a reprobate mind. From one false system to another they rushed into demoralising observances and the grossest idolatries, until they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. Phoenicia, Egypt, Thrace, and other States might transmit their absurd mythologies to Greece and Eome, and then exchange with them some of their intellectual refine- ment ; but gross darkness was covering the earth, and " they groped in gloom in the noonday as in the night." Across the night of paganism, philosophy has flitted on, like the common lantern-fly of the tropics, a light unto itself, but alas ! no more than an ornament of the surrounding darkness. Their poets, like the bards of the East to-day, sang of manes, ghosts, streams that emptied into " Elysian fields," and seats of deities ; but most of these, with their dreams of nectar quaffed by the gods, H.U.S H 58 INDEXES THAT TELL were fables invented for the vulgar, in which the very authors themselves had the least belief. What might have happened had the Far East, like Judea, caught a glimpse of the coming day, as its first light kissed the hilltops of Judea, and rose brighter until its beams emerged " to give light to them that sat in darkness and dwelt in the shadow of death," we may not know. Like meteors flaming through the night skies, these non-Christian faiths have shone " for a season," but have left the darkness deeper, blacker, and more intense than ever. There have been, however, in the mission and purpose of these partial, ethnic, and temporary creeds, some forces in, through, and by which we are enabled to see, not only the resultant conditions, but their own sad confessions of need. IV LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION 59 " As certain also of your own poets have said, . . . ." — St. Paul at the Athenian Areopagus. " A national religion, said Mozoomdar, may be a very fine thing ; but a rational religion is grander. To which noble words I would add : Any religion which boasts of being national proclaims to the world the fact that it is not the universal religion. As well may men ask for a national geography or a national astronomy as for a national religion."— Edward P. Rice, B.A., Bangalore, India. IV LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION The dying words of Goethe, " Light, more light ! " ex- press the simple articulation of a universal desire. Indeed, universal history is a long, keen, and pathetic struggle " through night to light " ; and in all climes and among all races the axiomatic truth of " via crucis, via lucis," has canonised it into a common proverb. It is as natural for man to seek the truth as it is for the plant to rise and seek the light. The clever and philosophic Hindoo, Japanese, or Chinese is a brother to the rude, untutored savages of " the dark continent " in his in- tuitive conception that knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness. Eastern literature is a thesaurus of unique mysteries. Its gems and surprises pay for research. Everywhere it emphasises the fact that virtue reaches the summits of life, and that crime easily gravitates to the depths of hell. But it fails just where man reaches out after eternal realities and spiritual certainties. Their " dark sayings " and " shadows " and " predictions " are fascin- ating but unscientific. No great living apologists value them. They remind one in their predictions, ritual, 6i 62 LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION and ceremonies, of the cold, dead aiirora-borealis in its fitful mirage playing its strange antics in a lifeless zone. Like the Samaritans, the Chinese, Hindoos, Japanese, and other peoples of the Far East, have had many loose and fragmentary predictions of a messenger of the Divine covenant coming suddenly to His temple. Most students, however, agree that these must be taken " cum grano salts." In " this mountain," in their " holy fields," their respective Jerusalems, Meccas, and other pilgrim resorts, there are shrines and temples claiming the long-expected advent. In laughing lakes, in musical woodland, by fairy glen, by sea-washed shores, in sylvan solitudes, and in busy marts, man feels a conscious divinity. There — he feels a tide of emotion towards a realm of life beyond his sight, and far beyond his touch ; a distant voice of prophecy and promise, a yet unknown Divine revelation of supreme and creative intelligence — at tlie analysis and nature of which, iu his pitiful limitations and bleared vision, he capitulates, and for the sake of convenience and the " next-best," he names after stars, omens, dreams, haruspices, sybils, satyrs among the woods, dii maj'ores, naiads, waters, gentle nymphs of the forest, rocks, mountains, aerial divinities, and even vicious and monstrous iniquities, which he surmises surround him in vast numbers.^ That phosphorescent light we so often observe in travels in the East, represents to him beckon- ing beacons, while he fancies he hears the charming music of the sirens as they woo to celestial shores. Even the purer and higher conceptions of the Divine ^ Canon of Shun; SMh King, iv. 8 ; Yueh Li. g, iv. ii. 2 ; Li-Tcyi ; Announcement of Thang ; Doctrine of the Mean, xxii. 64 Three Veteran Missionaries to China On the reader's left is the late Dr. Hudson Taylor, who arrived in China in 1854 ; standing in the centre is Dr. Griffith John, who reached China in 1855, while on the reader's right is Dr. W. A. P. Martin, who commenced work in China as early as 1850. The above picture was presented to the author by Dr. Griffith John. It was taken just a week before Dr. Hudson Taylor "entered into life." These three giants who have fought heathenism represent 156 years of service for China. Imperial Tablet commending Suicide of Virtuous Widows On the public highways and in conspicuous places in main streets these memorial arches may be seen. By Imperial decree and by family subscriptions they are raised. In Ch'u Cheo city, Anhwei province, there is an unusually elaborate arch built by Imperial sanction to the memory of the "virtuous and brave widow " of Elder Fei, who committed suicide by swallowing opium the same evening of her husband's death, in order to serve him in the next world. BIRTH-HOURS OF HISTORY 65 nauUi'e are vague, and more often than otherwise bihngiial in some of the kind of words they use ; " but not one of them locks up its adherents in the dungeons of despair, and then flings the key away." The sun shines through dense clouds, but it shines nevertheless ; it is the promise of day, even though it be so with a partial eclipse between the eye and the luminary. Crisis-Hours in History. — It was a remarkable period when, in the sixth century before Christ, there arose the great personalities who represented the three prevailing religions of China. It seemed to be a crisis-hour in history. In the strategic time, and in the strategic place, great men of destiny arose and left their impress on the age. In Greece, Pythagoras, the father of ancient philosophy, ruled men's thoughts. In China arose Con- fucius to set in order the state religion. In India arose Sakyamuni Gautama Buddha, to reform Brahminism. In Judea was being witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, and the great reverses to the religion of Jehovah. It was in this sixth century also that the times were illuminated by the lives and works of Jeremiah, Zoroaster, Ezekiel, and Confucius, by the work of Cyrus, and by the light of the prophets of the exile. That unique era indicated a great preparatory scheme in the religious history of the race. Confucianism gave a high code of ethics with no spirit of power to lend it action. Buddhism created a longing for a saviour, but threw no searchlight on the gloom. Taoism sought to find the elixir vitae, but found a quintessence of doubt. A Trinity of Faiths. — The following table sets forth the data and peculiar value of the three contempor- H.U.S. I 66 LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION aneous religions of the Empire, and shows at a glance their historic setting and character : — Confucianism. Buddhism. Taoism. Confucius, born in China, B.C. 551, died B.C. 478. Emblem of State Church, Dragon. Has had 2,400 years of propagation. Has influenced 75 generations of men now in the tomb. Represents Atheism. Buddha, born in India, B.C. 620, died B.C. 543. Emblem of worship, Image of Buddha. Has had 2,500 years of propagation. Has inlluenced 80 generations of men now in the tomb. Represents Idolatry. Laotsz, born in China, B.C. 604, disappeared B.C. 524. Emblem of worship. Demon. Has had 2,500 years of propagation. Has influenced 80 generations of men now in the tomb. Represents Superstition. These systems are not rivals. One temple may represent all three faiths. Although Confucianism is the religion of the literati, there is no one state religion universally and signally accepted by itself as to dignify its being denominated the state religion. The Chinese invest shares in all three faiths, practising their foolish rites, their severe austerities, and their pompous ritual, and at the same time may be considered orthodox ! There is to their minds no sense of incongruity in this. Though none of these systems bears the autograph of truth or reason, the average student accepts them as the " Will of Heaven," and yields to a mere slavish punctiliousness in the observance of their nice and exact forms and ceremonies. The fact that all these three systems are tolerated, financed, and supported by the Imperial Government, gives great weight to their claims, and makes almost imperative the rights of the priests LIGHTS THAT HAVE FAILED 67 to levy taxes on the masses for their temples, priest- hood, and pagan practices. To the refined ideas of the Christian student, the trinity of faiths as tabulated above represents both an unhistoric and unscientific synthesis of life and death, commencing in guesses and ending in dream and poetry. They are the lights that have failed. Among hundreds of thousands of the thinking and awakening masses, they are now regarded as " airy speculations," and like the baseless fabric of a vision " live no longer in the faith of reason." But while this is true, it is also a fact that millions still cling with rigid tenacity to "the traditions of the fathers"; and millions more have lost their way in the quagmires of paganism, and in the meshes of types, symbols, shadows, pilgrimages, days, sacrifices ; and, wooed to sleep with the songs of choirs invisible, and the fumes of incense, they have been ensnared and allured to the fascinations of mental and moral inertia. This is the spell and charm of heathenism, and it is the secret origin of all such aberrations as we know the heathen mind to be easily capable of developing. Seekers after God. — In Pressensu's Aricient World and Christianity^ its erudite author describes in fascinat- ing style the expectant attitude of the world at the coming of Christ. In respect to Virgil's prophecies in the fourth Eclogue, describing the golden age, the learned author writes : " It was especially in this aspect that Virgil was the inspired voice of his generation." The feast of Virgil was kept in the Middle Ages, and he was regarded as one of the prophets of Christ. Early legend has it that St. Paul visited his tomb in Naples, and lamented over it, crying : " greatest of poets, what had I not made of thee, had I but met thee in thy lifetime 1 " 68 LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION Not only among the star-worshippers of the Chaldean plains, but also among all men seeking after the way of life, the belief was shared that the incarnation among men of a Divine Saviour was to be the last and final word from heaven to men. This view was shared by Tacitus, Suetonius,^ and Josephus ; while Virgil said the messenger would be a little child from heaven, who would, in time, take away sin, restore the golden age, and usher in the millennial era. "The Desired of all Nations shall come" (Hag. ii. 7). — Whether these figures in the constellations, and the traditions with which the emblems are identified, are admitted into the cumulative evidence of the East — kindling and keeping alive the expectation of a Coming One — or whether we assign them a place in the fanciful archives that deal with the broken fragments of prophetic truth, no one can dispute the serious fact that they are the more mysterious to us because we do not understand them. Professor W. M. Eamsay, D.C.L., writes -.^ "The Hebrews always recognised that the Divine purpose reserved for them a future better than the past, and they alone associated the coming of the better age with the birth of a child. We must, I think, look to the East and to the Hebrew poetry for the germ from which Virgil's poem developed, though in the process of development, nourish- ment from many other sides, determined its growth and affected its character." From the mass of such evidence which is uncovered in all the sacred literatures of the East, one leans to the thought while delving into much of this ancient and ^ Suetonius, Fesp. c. 4 ; Tacitus, Aim. v. 13. ^ Yide Expositor, vol. iii. pp. 554 ff., "The Diviue Child and Virgil," Prof. W. M. Ramsay, D.C.L., LL.D., D.D. FRAGMENTS OF PROPHECY 69 universal theology, that " in the absence of a printed literature it was a magnificent idea to inscribe these doctrines upon the heavens themselves, and link them with the discoveries of astronomic science, so that the heavens might declare the glory of God, and that these precious promises and truths might be handed from father to son, from sage to sage, and from age to age, with the deepest reverence and awe." In the planisphere in the Temple of Dendera in Egypt, going back at least 2000 B.C., is the remarkable figure of a woman and a child. In the accompanying illustra- tion she is seen to be clothed with the sun, and has the moon at her feet. The Virgin and the Babe are there. In her hand she holds a sheaf of corn, symbolic of the promised Seed which was to reach innumerable progeny and bruise the serpent (Gen. iii. 15). Sir W. Herschel bears testimony that the heavens are scribbled all over with signs of dragons which the Messiah was to overcome. Shakespeare seems to have From the Plani- grasped the prophetic meaning of the sphere at Den- constellation picture above described. In dera in Egypt his Titus Anclronkus, he speaks of an ^■'"' arrow being shot up to heaven to the " Good boy in Virgo's lap." It is a most impressive fact that there are thousands of the best educated men in the Far East to-day who are agitated at the passing of the old faiths, and who are alert to the finger tips in search of the true way. A Point d'appui. — A certain dissensus of opinion has 70 LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION declared that most of these germinal religious ideas are useless, but the consensus of opinion seems to be that these kindergarten pictures and infant blocks in religious education, whether in constellation pictures, allegory, parable, mythus or fable, have been, and are an invaluable assistance to the more ready and intelligent appreciation of that faith which came at the fulness of time, " bringing light and immortality to light through the Gospel" "Errors like straws upon the surface flow, He who would search for pearls must dive below," If this point d'appui is related to bottom strata, then we may expect among a people of reflective instincts that much of their own elemental faiths, when divested of their rust and mildew, will show up not a little outline of spiritual significance, and help us to see their systems from their point of view. In such a vantage ground we should be placed in the best part of the orchestra, where we may listen to their mysterious harmonies, and dis- cover albeit, that what we thought was discord, after all proved to be harmonies misunderstootl. "All the means of action, The shapeless masses, the materials, Lie everywhere about us ; what we need Is the celestial tire, to change the flint Into transparent crystal, liright and clear." Star Signals. — There is in the Chinese schools a legend current to the effect that Confucius, in China, at least 500 B.C., had prognosticated the imminent advent of a deliverer, and that later disciples were sent in search of the celestial sign. The famous sentence in the Classics quoted in support of this "unconscious prophecy " reads : " Among the peoples of the Western IN DIVERS MANNERS 71 regions, there is to appear a sage." It is not con- sidered seriously by most sinologues, though many of the disciples of Confucius, including the Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty, construed it to mean Buddha. In the first book of Mencius, there is another striking passage which reads : " We have waited long for our Prince (or Son of Heaven). His coming will be our reviving." It is a strange coincidence, too, that the very last word or hieroglyphic used for " reviving " is the same generic character used in the Chinese language to signify the name of Jesus — the Eestorer, Eeviver, Giver of life, and Eedeemer of the race. Zoroaster sees his Star. — The Nestorians present one of the most interesting studies in the social and religious life of the Chinese. In 638 an Imperial decree recognises the Xestorians. Alopen, the high- priest of Ta-t'sin (all west of Euphrates and the Caspian), had arrived at Si-an Fu in 635, and translated some of the Mi-shih-a (Messiah) scriptures. They came to China about the same time as the teachings of Zoroaster became popular. They established monasteries at the capital. Their teachings and synagogues flourished in Shansi — the seat of the Tang dynasty. The Nestorians claim that Zoroaster was a disciple of Jeremiah, and that it was from him that he learned about the Messianic hopes. He is said to have taught the Persians concerning Christ. He told his disciples that " in the latter days a virgin should conceive, and bear a child, and that, as soon as the child was born, a star would appear, blazing, even at noonday, with undiminished lustre." " You, my sons," declared the venerable seer, " will perceive its rising, before any other nation. As soon as you see the star, follow it whithersoever it leads you, and 72 LIGHTS OF PAGAN CREATION adore the mysterious child, offering your gifts to him with the profoundest humility. He is the Almighty Word which created the heavens." This remarkable prediction was made 500 B.C. Chinese Emperor's Dream. — In the year a.d. 68, the first Hindoo missionaries arrived at the capital of China on white horses from Cabul. They were two Brahmin priests. They came at the invitation of the Emperor of China.^ They were received with Imperial favour and translated one of their Sutras into the Chinese literary style. Troubled by a dream of a golden messenger entering the ancient halls, one of the palace viziers (wise men) was called and suggested that this " must be Buddha, a divinity in Western parts." A special commission was appointed to the West in search of the new religion. They returned after long pilgrimages. They went only as far as India, and secured a tooth of S'akyamuni Gautama (original name Siddhartha). It was only thirteen years before these men reached China that the first missionaries of the Cross sailed the ^gean Sea, and entered Europe, They were arrested, whipped, and dismissed by the magistrates of a Eoman colony. It is remarkable that about this time Christianity was achieving its splendid triumphs in the West. The rival faiths did exploits. Buddhism went East and covered Asia with monasteries, while Christianity marched West and covered Europe with churches. "... and a false faith lingered still, As shades do, though the morning stars be out." ^ In A.D. 62 the Emperor had a vision. The special commissioners were despatched to India. After about two years' absence they returned with a lai-ge image of Buddha and some forty- two chapters of the Sutras. THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT H.U.S. 73 " The great need of China to-day is vital religion. What the Chinese need above all else is a heavenly principle that shall infuse a new moral and spiritual life into their nation, a mighty power that shall transform them in their inmost being, a Divine inspira- tion that shall create within their own breasts aspirations after holiness and eternal life. In other words, apart from Christianity, I can see no hope for China. It is Christ alone that can lead in the glorious dawn of the Chinese renaissance, the new birth of a mighty nation to liberty and righteousness, and ever-expanding civilisation. China will soon be prepared for the churches : will the churches be prepared for China ? " — Dr. Griffith John : 52 years in China. " If you will come and help us to mould aright those precious materials for building up there the Kingdom of Heaven, we shall, please God, save China yet. But the powers of evil are at work as well as the powers of good. If we fail in our -part now, the glowing metal that seems all hut ready for the touch of the Divine Artist will fall cold and hard again, and the Church may have to wait through decades, if not centuries, of shame and remorse, for the return of the opportunity of to-day." — Rev. J. Campbell Gibson, D.D., Swatow. THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT Heathenism must be defeated by displacement. In the study of natui'al philosophy, one of the earliest lessons demonstrated is that a medium cannot be poured into a receptacle so long as it is filled. There must first be the displacement of that which it contains, before it can contain anything else. When we enter the realm of the intellectual and the spiritual, the same rule applies. We shall, as missionaries, by the preaching of the pure and blessed Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord, counteract and supplant heathenism by truth and righteousness. Christianity has had but a hundred years of propaganda in China. Even under the perfunctory sanction of the Imperial Government, and through terrible persecutions and martyrdoms, it has made its demonstration. True, it has sometimes caused immense collisions ; but even in war and rebellion, both in its causes and results, it has not belied its creative and normative functions. It has implanted new social, political, and religious ideals among the youth in a sane and careful manner. It has imparted a new life which is springing up in a thousand forms. It is at the back of the new and superior movements which are awaking the nations, and 73 76 THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT which will be of immense significance in the future of the national life of these wonderful East-lands. In its advocacy of pure literature, science of healing, advancement in mechanical arts and the conveniences of life, Christianity is arresting the attention of the thinking men of the Far East. It might truly be said of the Christian press in China and Japan, that within a quarter of a century it has overturned the mythologies of paganism, taught a higher morality, changed fiction for fact, symbol to reality ; and in so doing has mortified the pride of paganism, con- founded its learning, revealed its absurdities, and ruined its credit. It is from this point of view that the superior character of Christianity is both seen and appreciated. For with Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and other systems, when the intellect expands and the soul-life is emancipated, it bursts the mere cerement which contained it, and casts it aside ; while Christianity gathers strength from all inflows of knowledge, truth, and culture. The only epitaph for heathenism, whether found in classic systems or rude idolatries, is : Shipwrecked upon a kiDgdom, wliere no pity, No friends, no hope ; no kindred weep for me, Almost no grave allowed me ; like the lily, That once was mistress of the field, and flourished, I'll hang my head and perish. Christianity has a tremendous advantage in discovering to their minds the superior value of an historical over a merely philosophical system. Being a religion of facts, and being consistent and eminently practical, it must appeal to the more educated of the masses ; despite the intellectual pride and conceit of the scholastic classes, DISCOVERIES 77 who have in India, as in China, been the most vigorous and efficient opponents of evangelisation. We gain our truest insight into the situation when we see how bravely and how sanely Christianity faces the giant problems of missionics, and flinches not. It works in the face of vast and organised opposition and physical and moral entanglements, compared with which, the unexplored tracts of sunless forests which Stanley discovered in the Dark Continent might be likened to weeds in the moorlands. Dr. David Livingstone used to say : " We can afford to work in faith, for Omnipotence is pledged to fulfil its promise." In replying to an address sent some years ago by the Shanghai merchants, Lord Elgin made the following trenchant statement, which is still worthy of a careful perusal : — " When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of China shall have been removed. Christian civilisation of the West will find itself face to face, not with barbarism, but with an ancient and defiant civilisation, in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claim to our respect and sympathy. In the colossal rivalry which will then ensue, Christian civilisation will have, with keen tactfulness, to win its way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a faith which reaches to heaven furnishes better guarantees than that which does not rise above the earth." This is at one and the same time the secret place and the open door to the most effective displacement. But it is a Titanic task : because as there can be no buoyancy without sufficient depth of water, neither can there be 78 THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT effective construction without adequate bases and the ways and means for such a magnificent achievement. These pagan systems, with all their half - truths, delusions, and snares, are yet ancient, established, and openly defiant ; and especially is this so among the illiterate masses. The situation is complex, critical, and almost pathetic. The fierce white light of knowledge has undermined and almost dethroned heathenism. Asia has had two thousand years to test heathenism ; and the verdict is to-day clear, strong, and unanimous, from the best and brainiest youth of these awakening East-lands, that " rotten wood cannot be carved," and that heathenism is an awful and ignominious anachronism. Tourists " taken in." — In the light of these facts, is it not at least rational and scientific to conclude that the new China and the new Japan, and other redeemed peoples from among our common humanity, shall be heard, and their witness accepted, over and above much of that flattering, fawning, and false eulogy which some Sybarite tourists on le grand tour of the Orient have, with glossary, camera, and guide-book, taken in, and been " taken in," as they took snap-shots of minarets and pagodas, temples and mart, with their moving humanities, and, be it remembered, these pictures taken from a silk- lined sedan chair or from the cosy deck of a river steamer ? Anyone who has seen heathenism in the streets, homes, highways, temples, among its priests and patrons in the gilded palaces, as well as in the hovels, will never, unless his sense of refinement is a minus quantity, flatter, fawn, or wink at its darkness and sin. No ! In a deception which has enthralled millions of our common humanity, proved its dim 8o Christian Girls in the "Door of Hope" Home This group of Christian girls is one of the best Christian evidences in the history and action of modern missions. They are composed of kidnapped children, runaway slaves, ill-treated daughters-in-law, and destitute women. Reared to lives of sin and shame, some are sold by opium-eating parents, and their salvation is a miracle of Divine grace. Some of these bright girls are trained for nurses. Hundreds have been re- deemed. Mrs. G. F. Fitch of Shanghai, China, who is the Chairman of this splendid work, writes: "We have not altogether understood God's delay in giving us the land and buildings which seem so necessary for the greatest usefulness of the work, but we have known that to wait for Him was better even than the fulfilment of our desires." DEMONSTRATIONS 8i guesses au awful failure, its priestcraft a sensual coterie, its temples a seraglio, made the most colossal lapses from virtue, set its ouly jewels of morality in obscene frames, and encased the golden truths of the Divine in the filthy shrines of Bacchus, and Jupiter, and Venus, we can find no more scathing denunciation than in the solemn words of Bassanio : ' ' In religion What damned error, but some sober brow "Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ? " While it is in the very nature of Christianity to be charitable and catholic — especially towards the rude and primary beginnings of a new life — it will, as light, shine on the darkness, and as strength, be kind towards weakness ; but it will be true. Heathenism is and has been for two thousand years the monstricm liorrcndum in Asia. Compromise with it would be treason to Christ. It cannot stand the ex- amination of ripe scholarship, or any comparison with accurate learning, or even the application of too reverent a faith. But in order to win its votaries, we must be adaptive, synthetic, and s}Tnpathetic, and the victory is already ours. That there is a field for investigation here is evidenced in the recent action of leading universities in America and Europe, in placing in their curricula the study of comparative religious science. It should be an indispensable prerequisite to a missionary appointment, and would at the outset inform the missionary candidate that in the initial stages of any evolution, the least, and not the most perfect, results are usually the rule. The Audacity of Christianity. — The present status H.U.S. L 82 THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT of the Christian Church in the Far East, its general standing with the native faiths, its more tolerant attitude towards racial antagonisms, and its relation to the home churches, total up into a sum of achievements, compared with which the early days of missions are as shadow to substance and promise to fulfilment. " Amplius " — wider, was the single word of criticism that Michael Angelo once wrote over the work of one of his pupils. Was it not Jesus who first voiced this command " wider " in that " upper room " missionary meeting ? New and superior movements are taking place in Asia. The present crisis is an epoch-marking era. Under the new and aggressive r^{)iine of Christian civilisation, nations and peoples, only yesterday classed as non- entities, are now seen to be actual and potent entities. Christianity has given a new and mighty impulse to Asia, and it is showing itself to be a force in national, industrial, and moral affairs. Staggered at the audacity of the Christian pro- paganda, and indignant at its universal claims, those who were once its coldest critics and fiercest assailants are now won to admit the fact and force of its Divine origin. Even among the most conservative devotees of the non-Christian religions are those who, if not arrested and fascinated by its doctrines, declare its fruits to be in harmony with the " will of Heaven " and the highest ethical teaching. The present attitude of Chinese newspapers towards Christianity is diametrically opposite to what it was before the rise and fall of the " Boxer " movement. A recent leading article in the vernacular press, comparing the religions of the East and West, says : " These nations DANGER SIGNALS 83 are opuleut, their armies powerful, their populace well instructed, and wealth abounds ; and all this without any idea of dependence upon gods and ghosts. . . . Who can really know anything about these gods and ghosts ? What proof is there in prayer to them ? . . . Westerners with their science investigate everything to its ultimate causes." Was it not China's ablest statesman, H. E. Chang Chih-Tung, who recently sent out a circular remonstrat- ing with a patriotic league known as " The Shanghai Parliament," and ended his warning with these words : " Don't cause our China to become like Juda\a " ? These represent but a fragment of what is expressed day by day in the street, court, temple, school, and tea- shop alike, concerning the new life which is showing itself in the arena of its fallen systems and dead religions. It is the consensus of oinnion among the lead- ing missionaries that at no previons time has the mind of the Chinese nation, in its best representatives, teen so accessible to instruction as to the character, aims, and exhibits of Chridianity as at the present hour. Aids and Hindrances. — Aided by national, civil, and moral ministrants, there has been a peril lest the Church should forget its high spiritual place and its temporal limitations. Lured to the dignity of " official status " and imperial recognition, the Eomanists have well-nigh gone to ruin on the quicksands of so-called temporal power. The lesson, warning, and demonstration is our endowment. Not less interesting and instructive has been the flirtation of the Confucian coterie with the missionaries. " Come into an alliance with us, and we will give Jesus a place among the immortals," is the Oriental offer, 84 THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT couched iu the most chaste and condescending language ! From all over the land come the most inviting calls to the missionaries to teach in the new schools, control new schemes, and push new industries. The work before the missionaries in China to-day is no mere " excursionist business." We need and demand the strongest and best equipped men. A merely pious man on pagan battlefields is Hke a Western yacht in an Eastern typhoon ! It needs the fire of spiritual life and the dynamic and moving power of knowledge to enable a man or woman to be a burning as well as a shining light in these nightlands of heathendom. It has been asked, and not prematurely, " Will there be danger lest the Chinese churches may develop forms of organisation with too much of Orientalism and too little of New Testament precedent ? " This is a very vital question. While we cannot expect the new con- verts to apprehend at a bound all that is required of them as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, it should be written to their credit that they have shown the capacity to grow in grace and in truth. Under the recent baptism in blood and in fire, the native church did not come out of the cataclysm unscathed ; but it did emerge purified of much of its dross, and refined and established in the process of testing and trial. One of the most significant signs of the times is the fact that some of the best donors in China to the service of missions are from among the merchant-princes and the once hostile mandarinate. The attitude of the Im- perial Government is becoming more and more tolerant; and this by conviction, rather than by force of policy. Again, the mutual relations of missionary, merchant, and magistrate are clearer ; and this affords the most efficient THE NATIVE PRESS 85 guarantee against commercial antagonisms, political rivalries, and religious animosities. Spiritual Bloodhounds. — Again, the native press is a great formative factor. It is alive to the fact that China is in a great transition stasre. It is advocating the sending out of " spiritual bloodhounds " to seek a new religion ; and, moreover, it is highly favourable to the synthetic attitude taken by Japan in regard to v^^hat the future religion of the State shall be.^ The Chino-Japanese rationalistic and anti-dynastic literature is, unfortunately, liberating forces which it cannot control. Ideas are gaining ground among the millions of students, that a powerful State can be maintained without God. Nothing can so effectively riddle this false situation with shafts of light, as a sound, safe, and scientific Christian literature. Only a recent issue of a native newspaper contained the following forcible statement by one of the young reformers. He said : " If the eyes and ears are open, reliable information can enter ; and if the heart and brain are exercised, proficiency will result. The ears and eyes are the foreign periodicals ; the heart and brain are the colleges ; and the circulation is the railway." A Pivotal Period. — The great displacement has created a crisis -hour in the purpose and plan of missions. The entu-e situation has chancjed. It is a pivotal period in the history and evolution of the Far East. These newly awakening nations are standing at ^ The Shintoism of Japan is the religion of sMn-tao, or "divine patli " or "spiritual way." The name of the system Shin-to-ism was intro- duced in the sixth century. It is doubtless an expression derived from the Book of Cha7iges—'' Regnvd the divine path of Heaven, and the un- erring sequence of season." Compare Acts xvii. 22-31. 86 THE CHRISTIAN DISPLACEMENT the parting of the ways. That flash of light which reveals a life, a nation, aye, an empire unto itself, has turned its searching rays upon the nation's social, moral, political and commercial life. The results are solemnis- ing, and baffle description. In a word, China, like the prodigal, has come to herself — she is no longer in the dreams of somnolence, or in the far-off country of the past ; but is changing, reforming, and regenerating with a rapidity which is almost revolutionary. No longer need the Church sit " at ease in Zion," or pray for open doors in the great Mongolian continent. What it needs is the mighty animus that moved with dynamic power the early and aggressive — and because active, therefore fruitful — Church of apostolic times. At this crisis-hour we must act quickly if we would win. Looking back at the gaunt, craven-hearted, defeated, retreating forces of heathenism, there are a million of the most intelligent youth in China ivho are ready to embrace a neiv religion — they will soon trade all they have to secure the pearl of great price : "So careful of the type ; but no, From scarped clifl' and quarried stone She cries, A thousand types are gone : I care for nothing, all shall go ! " VI A STRATEGIC KEY " And Jesus called unto Him the twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness." — Matt. x. 1. " No more practical work, no work more productive of fruit for civilisation could exist than that carried on by those who give their lives to the preaching and exhibiting of the gosj^el of Christ." Theodore Roosevelt. " The hope of China is iu the miraculous spread of Christianity." Sir Robert Hart. VI A STRATEGIC KEY That the missions have grasped the geuius which sees in religion more than a mere al-rial salvation, and some- thing as intensely practical as Jesus intended it to be, is seen in the wide scope of their activities and the volume and variety of their agencies. They have laid hold of the beatitudes, and made them articulate in deeds of love : not the least of which is in the sanctity and lialo they shed around child-life, and in their absolute regeneration of the home. In the manner and form of its adaptation to circum- stances, the programme of modern missions shows a remarkable versatility. Every combination of educa- tional, industrial, and spiritual life is introduced into the arena. Schools, churches, hospitals, orphanages, and industrial institutions of every kind, aid the best inter- pretation of its spirit, life, and purposes. Medical knowledge and skill is proving to be a mighty factor. Its influence in opening doors in pagan lands is as marked as was the exercise of miraculous gifts in the days of the Apostles. It also shields the health of the growing missionary force. In the methods and results of its advocated studies in natural science is found an effective agency in undermining the whole H.U.S. Sg M go A STRATEGIC KEY superstructure of pagan ignorance. All these are potent forces, which to-day are influencing and winning the millions of the Far East to the realities and beneficent blessings of a new life. Love makes the Sweetest Discoveries. — The key that unlocks the door of heathenism is very often in the hands of the missionary physician. H. M. Stanley said that " the greatest discoveries made in darkest Africa were the roads to the hearts and confidence of the people." In the realm of medical science there is a magnificent field open to the consecrated and cultured physician. For it is true in heathen, as in Christian lands, that love makes the sweetest discoveries. The history and action of modern missionary enter- prise give the palm to medical missions. In Africa, did not David Livingstone win his way with his medicine chest and a few surgical instruments ? At the point of the lancet, Peter Parker opened the barred doors of China to commerce and to missions. Among the superstitious Koreans, and by his tactful skill in saving the life of one of the princes in the royal palace, after all the wise men and native doctors had tried in vain to stanch the flow of blood with sealing wax, the famous Dr. Allen opened the walled cities of the Hermit Kingdom. Dr. Elmslie won his way and the way for Christianity in Kashmir in a few months, when Evangelical missionaries had tried to effect an entrance for years. The same is true of Dr. Carr's medical work in Persia ; and in many other countries, where other plans had proved unsuccessful, the simple aid of pulling a tooth, the lancing of an abscess, the administering of a dose of quinine, aloes, or even the application of an eye- wash or the use of sulphur ointment, has been " the MEDICAL MISSIONS 91 key to hearts " which has opened regions hitherto inaccessible. The late Dr. Sydney E. Hodge, wrote : " Christianity never ignored any part of man's nature. From the first it was a gospel to the whole man, body and spirit. It is in the very nature of Christianity, and is the very essence of its message. The medical mission- ary preaches in deeds that love of God of which the heathen are constantly hearing. As our blessed Lord made us understand God by coming amongst us, so the medical missionary tries to make men understand Jesus Christ by living a Hfe of self-sacrifice amongst them ; by deeds of love they can understand ; by sympathising with pain and suflering ; and by showing how his power to heal the body, coming from Him ' from whom all skill and science flow,' is a type of that spiritual power which can heal the sm-sick soul." Dr. W. E. ]\Iacklin, whose fame and name, for his magnificent medical service, are all over Central China, spends days and nights, after great operations and nerve- exacting toils in his large hospital in Nanking, in going about doing good among the pariahs and the castaways. "With the larger sums of money which he calls on the rich to pay for their treatment, he is enabled to save many a Lazarus at the expense of Dives. He is known as " the beloved physician " ; and by his love and service seems to be just as immune from pestilential disease as he is from attack by brigands in any part of the country. Only Christian Nations Normal. — Only the nations that enjoy Christian civilisation have any normal ideas of medical science. The story of native doctors and their fearful and wonderful practices is an original chapter by itself. When it is considered that superstition makes 92 A STRATEGIC KEY a Chinese eat the prescription, after it has been burned to ashes, so that he may get the very essence of it into him, it is easily seen that heathenism has its absurdities as well as its pitiful side. The above may be hard on the drug-store, but in China it is safe to say it is easier on the stomach. With the native apothecary, tiger's bones, three months after corruption, are as precious as a box of spikenard. Scorpions, wasps, centipedes, lizards, bear's gall, chamois horn, honeycomb, duck's offal, pig's eye-balls, and name- less and atrocious mixtures, are used, which you would not want to see even in your dreams. One of the most curious customs we ever heard of was that in some places the physician was paid only during such time as the patients were well. Should sickness occur, the pay was stopped ! Drastic but suseestive. Into a mission station in Ch'u Cheo, Anhw^ei province, a man once brought into the clinic the partially decomposed body of a still-born babe, and offered in all good faith to sell it for medicinal purposes ! Physiology, anatomy, chemistry, surgery, and obstetrical practice are all unknown. In the hour of nature's trial the condition of the patient is one of dread and fear. Acupuncture may be performed as a nerve stimulant. The presence of one of their ignorant midwives is even worse than being left alone. A newborn babe may not receive its first bathing before it is two years old. A sick person is never bathed. There are no laws requiring qualifications for medicine or surgery practice. The seat of the breath, as of the powers of learning, is located in the bowels. Health and preservation depend on the just proportion of the five elements of fire, earth, wood, metal, and water, while these are controlled by evil demons. A HEATHEN CLINIC 93 Prescriptions. — There is a valuable prescription issued by an Imperial physician named Mo Beh-Toz, and is considered infallible for a troublesome tooth, i.e. pro- vided the tooth is not a false one. " Cook well the bones of a rat, pulverise, and apply to the tooth. If it is foreordained that the tooth will come out, this will bring it ; if not, it will become more firmly fixed than ever." Another tooth remedy, popular with the native quacks and drug-stores, is this : " liemove the entrails of a fish, fill the abdominal cavity with arsenic acid, hang in a cool place, wait for the fins to turn white, scrape the fins and small white excrescences dry, pulverise, mix with some aromatic powder, make a paste, and apply to the tooth. If it is ordained," etc. etc. The following is an explanation of the cause and a remedial agency for malarial fever : " During the sleep of exhaustion which follows the chill, let the parent or near relative slip up quietly to an unlocked box, or door, and suddenly lock it ; thus the evil spirit is locked within, and the patient is saved." It is amazing to think of the credulity of a people as practical and as economical as the Chinese, and one marvels how easily they are duped by the " medicine men," who are mostly ignoramuses of a very superstitious and yet wily order. "Writing of these men. Dr. Arthur Smith, in his Bex Christus, says : " Chinese medical science is little better than a parody on what it professes. Surgery is practically unknown. Chinese medicines are nauseous, expensive, and for the most part inert. Super- stition vitiates every kind of treatment. Nursing is a lost art that has never been discovered. Foods for the sick are everything which they should not be, and dieting 94 A STRATEGIC KEY is both inconceivable and impossible. Antiseptics are as unknown as the X-rays, and in tlie absence of sanitation, ventilation, proper clothing, isolation, and general common- sense, nothing but a strong constitution and the mercy of God prevent all patients from dying daily of uncon- scious but age-long violation of all the laws of nature. One's faith in the germ theory of disease is much shaken by the unassailable fact that the Chinese race still survives." The chief surgical instrument of the Chinese physician is a long needle, which, sometimes heated, sometimes cold and infected, he thrusts into various parts of the body where the evil spirit causing the disease is supposed to secrete itself. Into liver or neck, knee or elbow joint, it is thrust, setting up irritations or abscesses, or rendering the part for ever stiff. A sick person may have prescribed a piece of human flesh, cut off from the body of a slave-girl or other person. A tilial child may willingly donate to a sick parent this piece of flesh either to be eaten or plastered on to the diseased part. Friends and neighbours with all the hum-drum of beating gongs and incantations will gather around a sick babe, and by screaming seek to drive away the evil demons thought to be causing its convulsions. The babies of the poor are strapped to the backs of their older sisters, and the little eyes face the sun all through the glare of the day. Dust, dirty washcloths, and the presence of specific diseases, do the rest to rob many a child of sight almost before it begins to see. To save washing and watching the child, its clothes are so made that it can care for itself. The seeds of social impurity are thus sown at a startlingly early period. Parents do not restrain their talk before the child, and 96 Blindfolded Idols These strangely blindfolded idols may be seen in the Buddhist temples. Sometimes the idols are blindfolded while heathenism holds high carnival in its nameless and shameless orgies. In the Chinese homes may often be seen the idols blindfolded for an hour or so by the inmates while gambling or some other more vicious sin is indulged in. THE PITY OF IT 97 the child language becomes innocently vile. Cuprum is of value in cholera, but they cause the patient to chew down the copper cash, and believe in its efficacy ! Dr. ElUott I. Osgood of Ch'u Cheo, Auhwei, writes : Normal Conditions of Paganism. — " The poor have no salvation from the ravages of disease and exposure. A little orphan boy was found on a cold winter's morning with the toes of one foot frozen off, leaving a great ugly ulcer. His hair was matted, and his head covered with scabs and sores ; his body was covered with itch, and his clothes filled with vermin. He had no friends. He lived by begging at the roadside. An old man through ignorance had contracted a vile disease. He had been compelled to beg for years. No one wanted him in his home. It took him eight days to walk twenty-five miles to a Christian hospital, where he finally received healing for body and soul. The friendless sick are left to die by the roadside, and their exposed bodies are seen by multitudes passing every hour. If along country roads the body may be left until devoured by wolves, only a grinning skull remains to tell of the tragedy." The scale of living is so low and the ignorance so dense, that when an animal dies it may be cut up and used for food. Death stalks in the path of such gross ignorance. The kitchen refuse is thrown out at the front door and forms into a cesspool ; the result is typhoid fever. There is no relief for pain but the deadly opium pipe. Tlie number of its victims — despite the stringent measures for prohibition — is increasing at an appalling rate. A diseased eye is further irritated by dirty hands and cloths until the eyelids are drawn in by the cicatricial tissue. The final result is opacity H.U.S. N 98 A STRATEGIC KEY of the cornea. Ingrowing toe-nails become an adjunct of bound feet, making the large toe a festering sore. Abscesses, ulcers, fistula, and all their relations, run riot under the cover of a dirty, gummy plaster. Their repulsive appearance is hid from the human eye, but natural drainage is denied, and the vitality is weakened by the poison forced back into the system. A piece of injured or diseased bone must be allowed to slowly disintegrate and discharge itself in the form of pus. Some of the doctors have an experimental knowledge that is really valuable, but it is so mixed up with super- stition as to render it inert, if not dangerous to life. Here is a field for the investment of talent by the best young physicians of our day, whose culture, scientific knowledge, and consecration may open new centres for spreading the light of the Gospel, and through vrhose healing ministry thousands may open their doors and catch their first glimpse of the Christ — the Teacher, Healer, and Eedeemer of our race. This is the more urgent now because the Chinese are coming to see that the true standard by which movements and religions must be measured, is their capacity to minister to human need. VII SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES 99 "Each worker for Christ, in his own particular sphere, meets with many valleys and mountains, crooked places and rough ones, which God alone can deal with. Let him rejoice not only that God's power is equal to the occasion, but also that there are diffi- culties of such a nature as to make the putting forth of that poAver a visible and notable thing." — J. Hudson Taylor. " I went to the East with no enthusiasm as to missionary enter- prise. I came back with the fixed conviction that missionaries are the great agents of civilisation."— Hon. W. B. Reed, United States Commissioner. VII SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES Superstition seems to be a common possession among men. Indeed, if the searchlight were turned upon Christendom by some al»le seer of lieatheudom, and all the gamut of its accepted fables and superstitious catalogued and aptly commented upon, the results would be not far from startling. But it is, of course, easily seen that there is a tremendous dittereuce between the simple old wives' fables which linger in the West, and the inrooted faith in the presence and jjowers of infuriated demons in pagan lands. It is the ditterence of shadow to substance, and of enchained fears and light jesting. Heathen lands seem to possess a peculiar " psycho- logical climate." Missions have to note this. Nor is this fact to be lightly treated. Over the moral and intellectual destinies of men this climatic environment is a big formative factor. Here is au arena where there is more than a mere diflerencc of view-point. It is actual and decisive. We have seen some frogs that seem to take on the colour of the limb of tree upon which they rested by the waterside. Language, ex- pression, manners, and customs, as well as the products of the soil, attest this principle. No amount of erudition in the study can ever adequately grasp this potent law I02 SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES of life so much as a shoulder-to-slioulder contact with it, in and among its respective peoples. We are as much an enigma to the average China- man as he is to us. He tells us the bias is in our peculiarly shaped eye. Why we do not have long black hair, almond eyes, and yellow face, is to him a baffling mystery. He simply capitulates by pitying us. His perspective is his own, and he is satisfied with his oblique vision. We find it difficult to take a racial diagnosis, or to locate each other in the respective origins of our ethnology. But when the searchlight of reason and science is turned on the superstitions and absurdities of heathenism, the whole situation is at once apparent. Every system is known by its fruits. Nor is there any unkind ex- aggeration in this statement. They have become vain in their imaginations, foolisli in their reasonings, and piti- fully ridiculous in all their conclusions. Heathendom turns a complete somersault in its common-sense. One fact tells. They keep up the devil's birthday, as over against our Christmas, and their j9Hm« ecclesia is the temple to the god of the Eastern hell ! They paint spear-heads over doors and windows to keep away evil spirits. Charms are worn by the children to keep away diseases. Boys are dressed in girls' clotlies to deceive the devils, lest the son and heir should bo mysteriously kidnapped. The dead are often placed outside of the houses for fear of the "death contagion." It is said ladies use rats' flesh at dinner as a hair restorer ! In sendiug the paper kitchen god — a paper image — back to heaven every year, the Chinese housekeeper smears the lips of the idol with molasses, so that it might, on arriving at the pearly city, report a A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONUNDRUM 103 sweet tale to the Great Spirit, and bring back good luck and fair harvests. Certain acts have a prescribed value. Merits and demerits are assigned. Buying a coffin, setting free birds, fish, crabs, and shrimps that are offered for sale, are all rewarded. Destroying books of false religions, gatheiing up scraps of printed paper, will bring good luck for a thousand days. He who uses lettered paper to kindle a fire will have ten demerits and itchy sore legs. He who burns it in a filtliy place, twenty demerits, sore eyes and blindness. Levelling a grave is punished by fifty demerits ; digging up a corpse by a hundred ; killing a male child by two hundred. Nothing is said about destroying unwelcome girl babies. The list of rewards and punishments goes on ad infinitum. Should a fire occur, the imfortunate loser is beaten by the official for carelessness, and is not allowed inside any other house for three days. The " fire devil " has to be avoided. Should the victim be able to convince the magistrate that it was a " heavenly fire," caused by a fox spirit, etc. etc., he may then avoid a beating, and possibly have his house turned into a shrine or a temple. In a drought or a flood certain city gates are closed. If there is great heat, the " south " gate which rules the " fire element " is closed ; if floods destroy crops, the " north " sate which controls the " water element " is closed. The elements must be kept in equipoise, or heaven and earth might collapse. " Calling back the soul " is a weird and vague idea. By rivers and ponds, over city walls, and by doorsills, voices day and night moan and call to the souls to return to the bodies of people who are sick or demented. I04 SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES Some eat a " charmed " egg, decorate and carry a bird to the Chen Hwang Miao — or God of the City Temple — and ask at the ten departments of Hades if the soul is detained there, and pray that it may follow the perfume of incense back to the home. Recently an official astronomer was whipped with bamboo for a miscalculation. When gambling, or about to gamble with cards, or dice, the family order the eyes of the idol to be covered up until the game is over. A god that is cunning enough to see through their cheating would not be tolerated. Upon a missionary remonstrat- ing with a heathen for burning paper money, and all the paraphernalia at the grave of a departed relative, the mourner motioned him to be silent, saying : " Hush ! that stupid idol doesn't know any better. Do you think we'd be so foolish as to put in genuine coin ? " In the city of Luho, in Kiangsu province, a woman wTnt to a temple to pray for the recovery of her son from smallpox. She promised offerings and made vows. The stipulations were to the effect that if her son recovered, and was immune from the pitmarks of the disease, she would offer him as a priest to the temple for ever. He recovered, but the smallpox marks were there, and, worse than ever, they were black. Enraged at this dereliction of duty on the part of the idol, she dashed off to the temple with a coil of rope in her hand. Forcing her way into the temple, she summarily lassoed the paste- board deity, and ran off to the river by the crowded city gate, nothing daunted, and shouting : " I'll teach you to lose your benign influence, idol ! " soused the innocent offender into the waters several times — when to her amazement the god melted away in the rushing waters. Their strange manners and customs appear peculiar RESULTS OF FOOTBINDING lO: {From the "Forii(j)i Field.") Translation of Chinese niotto : — "To tamper with creation is to spoil the harmony of heaven." a sketch made from an x-eay puoto of a chinese woman's foot. Drawn by the Rei'. W. A. Cornahy. H.U.S. io6 SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES to us because we do not see them as they do ; nor do we see ourselves as they see us. Of course, the view-point is a great factor in any perspective. Still, to us, the celestial has much to amuse, puzzle, and criticise. Tell him that their tiny-footed " golden lily " ladies are to be pitied, and he asks why our women bind their waists. Criticise his long queue as a useless appendage, and he says our hair- dress is no longer than that of a monkey. Ask him why Chinese ladies walk assisted by a long pipe, and he asks why, if they think themselves better looking than their celestial sisters, our ladies should veil their faces in shame ! We cannot know why they count the fish by the tail, and the cows by the head ; purchase oil by the pound, and silk by the ounce. It is " custom," and that is the end of the argument. Lazy students may be punished by the Literary Chancellor by being whipped with the bamboo. Should the weather change while you are travelling and are staying at an inn, no one mentions the matter of rain, cold, or likely disadvantage. In an indirect way it may be referred to. The same is true of a dream while travelling. An ill omen must be silenced and sufibcated by being kept in the dark, lest the spirits should catch on and be angered. All the Chinese shop fronts are open. Tinkers, tailors, jewellers, lapidarists, butchers, bakers, rattan-basket makers, drapers, doctors, dentists, midwives, marriage-makers, cobblers, ironmongers, silk stores, tea shops, and a thousand and one other ways of making a living are all open and exposed in view of all the rushing, confused, and boisterous crowds. There are no shutters, as we use them, and no glass windows where goods are exposed for sale. No goods are priced with tickets, but all is done by barter. You cannot tell, when the jeweller asks you fifty dollars for a ring or jade MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 107 stone, whether it will finally be offered you for ten. There is no ssense of honour involved. Notwithstanding that the large stores liaug their attractive perpendicular notice boards, and one of them usually Siiys, " Chen pu cr kifl," meaning, " No two prices liere," the native proverb says : " Who treads here with foreign feet, cannot sure avoid our cheat." Every man that goes out at night takes a lantern. If he did not have it, he might be taken for a thief. The ancestral name is usually written on the lamp with some lucky inscription. There is no courtship in China. Brides do not see the faces of their bridegrooms until after the ceremony is over. Sometii)ies the bridal trousseau is worn for three days and three nights. During this time a genuine exhibition of modesty demands that the bride keep her eyes closed for three days. The Chinese cat vice three times a day. They ply their chop-sticks as dexterously as we do knife and fork. To them our use of the knife is barbarous. At table, superstition enters in, and the places are appointed with regard to signs, age, and direction from which guests come. The head and hairdress are peculiar. They do not seem to realise that the queue is the badge of ser- vitude forced upon them by the conquering Manchus. Moustachios are not worn until the man is over forty years of age. Married women have the hair pulled out over the forehead. At a glance you can tell whether a woman is a maiden, engaged, or married. The elite cultivate long finger-nails. Some of them are eight inches long ; at this coveted length they are encased in a silver or bamboo shield which runs up the sleeve. Funeral services are costly, and are held in highest esteem. Filial sons will present aged parents with a loS SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES beautiful coffin, which is often kept in the guest-room in the house. Incense burns around it night and day to keep away evil influences. When a person dies, the body is elaborately dressed and paper money is piled in the coffin. This pays the way to Nirvana, bribes the spirits, and wins soul-rest. The children in school read and study aloud. Each tries to outdo the other in sliouting ; the prevailing idea being, the greater the noise the deeper the impression on the stomach. The intellect is located in the bowels. The school terms for the year in some village schools, read thus : " Ten bushels of wheat, ten bushels of fine wheat, a picul of salt, twenty pounds of pork, a keg of wine, a gallon of hemp -oil, two pounds of sugar, a bunch of incense, and a congratulatory packet of sweetmeats." Some of the Oriental customs are as fascinating as they are peculiar. Their politeness is extreme and often wearisome. One of the happy thhigs about greeting is that friends shake their own hands. Hats arc kept on as a mark of respect in calling. No one would think of presenting his or her own card. Spectacles are taken off when addressing tlie guest. Women and girls will not sit on the other end fjf a bench where a man is sitting. Should a guest enter the room, they retire. In the mission churches the men and women are separated by an aisle ; often a red screen hangs between. There is no flirtation in the mission churches. Asking a few girls to sing in the church choir would be an irreparable insult. In many mission schools, however, this hyper- sensitiveness and false modesty is being overcome. Some of their customs appear to us to be childish in the extreme. For instance, an old man can sit for hours enjoying flying his musical kite. If for no other reason TOPSY- TUR VVDOM 109 than that the music of its liorn can please the spirits of wiud and air, he seems to revel in its rest and leisure. The theatre is as sacred as the church. Both men and women smoke tobacco and opium. A man will kill himself to spite his neighbour. Policemen, soldiers, and sailors carry umbrellas while on duty. In a hundred different ways they are the very opposite of what we deem to be right and proper. They wear white for funerals, and red for wedilings. They write the surname first. They read up and down, instead of from left to right. They mount a horse on the right, and their seat of honour is on the left. They whiten instead of blacken the soles of their shoes. Their wheelbarrows have sails, and their ships are without keels. They have a clock with stationary hands, while the timepiece goes round. They have roses without scent, and a candlestick that fits the candle. More strange than all is that they have a literature without an alphabet, and a language without a grammar. A Chinese resident in .Vnierica wrote to a relative in China : " You cannot civilise these foreign devils. They are beyond redemption. They will live for weeks and months without touching a mouthful of rice ; but they eat the Hesh of bullocks and sheep in enormous quantities. Tliat is why they smell so badly; they smell like sheep themselves. Every day they take a bath to rid themselves of their disagreeable odours, but they do not succeed. Neither do they eat their meat cooked in small pieces. It is carried into the room in large chunks, often half raw, and they cut and slash and tear it apart. They eat with knives and prongs. It makes a civilised being perfectly nervous. One fancies no SUPERSTITIONS AND ABSURDITIES himself in the presence of sword-swallowers. They even sit doicn at the same table with women, and the latter are served first, reversing the order of nature. . . . Yet the women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are dragged around a room to the accompaniment of tlie most hellish music." It may thus be easily seen that " recriminations regarding national customs " are not calculated to be successful in convincing either party ; so that we might with good grace and discretion be reminded that "There is so much batl in the best of us, Aud so much good in the worst of us, That it liardly behooves any of us To talk about the rest of us." VTTl THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL " Costly catliedrals, ornate churches, and ecclesiastical millinery seem as a travesty on our faith, to the weary, tired, heroic, and battle-scarred missionaries who stand bare-handed in the front- fighting line. It is as the callous painting of the lifeboat when the wrecks are pleading, and when the call is loud and long and real to man the lifeboat and send it o'ev the dark waves to seek and save the lost." "Never so hopeful, but it is a critical time."— Dr. W. A. P. Martin. "We are a supernatural people engaged in a supernatural work." — Dr. Hudson Taylor. "Educate I Educate ! Educate I " — Dr. Griffith John. VIII THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL HiSTOKY recounts no grander acbievenients than the triiuuphs of the Cluucli during her early life, when she was obeying her Founder's imperial command. It was a regal commission, and its ambassadors were the ministers plenipotentiary in its ready and swift execution. It embraced and embodied all the facts, commands, and promises of the Kingdom of God, and all the fulfilment of its blessed redemptive atonement. In those early days the Church had an enduement of Divine power. When she prayed, the earth shook ; mountains were removed ; doors were opened ; shackles rent from the feet of apostles; tyrants and mobs were rendered helpless ; empues were recast ; and the powers of darkness Hod before the penetrating gleams of light. In a few years from the scenes of Calvary, it was announced tliat Pan was dead, and the Olympian Jove was hurled fruni his high seat. It was only when the churches ceased to go that the power departed. As soon as the missionary fire dwindled, the presence of Christ left them. Not until the Jerusalem Church was struck with a Divine blow of persecution did she become scattered far and wide. This new infusion of life gave H.U.S. 113 p 114 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL the churches to Palestine, Arabia, North Africa, and Asia Minor. It speaks well for the heroisms and chivalry of the newly initiated missionary churches that in less than seventy years after the imperial mandate was given by our blessed Lord, nearly all the Koman Empire, from Babylon even on to Spain, had been penetrated by the missionaries, and mapped out for strategic occupancy by the Apostles of the Kingdom. tSo, to-day, as then, the same persistent, all-conquering power of the Gospel is winning its way. It is proving that it is superior to all other faiths and forces. Modern civilisation and the witness of these great awakening Asian empires attests this fact. Are not all the great nations nominally Christian nations ? Japanese states- men, with a tinge of pride, speak of Japan as enjoying a newly born Christian civilisation. The same is true in many articles in their splendid vernacular press. Is it not true also that no heathen power legislates or influences the world's thought ? The Great Challenge. — Tlie same challenge that Christianity threw down to Eomau, Celt, Greek, Teuton, Persian, Jew, and Mohammedan, it repeats to-day to the Hindoo, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. To put it tersely, Christianity is both on exhibition and on trial to-day in Asia. It needs the best gifts, highest agencies, and most thoroughly equipped representatives, iDoth to witness to its power, and to present and represent its claims before its ever increasing heathen-world audience. A great and effectual door is opened : and there are many adversaries. We must not allow China to be proselytised by the well-equipped and liberally financed materialistic teachers from Japan. Within a decade the ii6 " Inasmuch " She came to the Christian Hospital in Nanking with a terribly distorted and mutilated foot — the result of the cruel and disastrous practice of footbinding. All that Christian love and skill could do was done for her ; but hers was a hopeless case. Under the anaesthetic her feet were amputated. She pleaded with the missionaries to shield her from a life which would be worse than death. To-day she is a bright little Christian, and under the care of Principal Miss Emma Lyon, in the Nanking Christian College, is a living witness to the uplifting saving power of the Gospel. " Inasmuch." The lower illustration shows her foot in Necrosis. Chinese "Golden Lilies" This is the name given to the crushed and bound feet of Chinese girls and ladies. The fashionable size of a shoe would average from 3! to 4 inches. The shoes are beauti- fully embroidered, and are mostly made at home. They are fastened on with silk straps, and taper to a delicate point. GREETING THE MESSIAH 117 whole situatiou will have been changed. It is the nick of time to co-operate with God in the evangelisation of these millions, who are waiting — yes, waiting in China, for some more certain, sound, and redeeming life to replace their eftete religions systems. We must convince the Chinese, in grace and in truth, that it is the religion of Jesus which, in every age, in all climes, and under all conditions, has been the spring of its best civilisation and the controlling power of its untiring progress. Our Asiatic Christ. — Coming as it does to Asia, it is not an exotic element. It should not be for- gotten that Christ joined the human family through an Asiatic family. His disciples, too, were Orientals. One is reminded here of tlie work l)y Mozoomdar on The Oriental Christ. In this able work we are told that it is only through Oriental eyes that we can fully understand and appreciate the Christ and His mission. While this is interesting reading, it must always be conceded that our conception of Jesus must ever be spiritual as well as Oriental and poetic. Here, then, is a magnificent opportunity. The Orient is again greeting the Messiah. Native preachers speak of Him as " Our Asiatic Christ." It is to Him these East-lands are looking for salvation, liberty, light, and truth, and for the certainties of the life that now is, as well as of the life that is to be. Viewed from the high vantage ground of the field of missionary conflict, it is universally agreed that the work of the evangelisation of China, Japan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Korea, and isolated Thibet, must be regarded chiefly as an Asiatic enterprise. In order to bring about this splendid consummation, the native church must have leaders. Several wise and able native leaders could at ii8 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL this present moment, if they were in evidence, render noble and lasting service to the cause by emphasising the necessity of good citizenship, and proving to the Government that they are not a " dangerous revolutionary cult," who, under the i^gis of its role, are a peril to themselves and a menace to the integrity of the state. The Peerless Service. — Never was there greater need for teachers, evangelists, leaders. The crises demand that the hest-equipped. and strongest men and women he sent into the foreign field. The late Professor Henry Drummoud saw in China " the greatest mission field in the world " ; he was. a seer. He saw that nothing but the Gospel could save China. No culture is too great, no genius too high, and no gifts in genuine consecration too simple, to devote to the peerless service of the mission field. Talk about the investment of influence ! — here is a field of undiscovered wealth. To those who know the true genius of Christianity, and can, with scientific and philosophic training, revitalise their social and political economy, and apply the best adaptation to China's present needs — such men are the men most needed there at the present liour. The conversion of China and Japan will be the casting of tlie last die in the great work of shaping and impressing the superscription of the Kingdom of God upon the now melting ores of these miglitiest nations of antiquity. For young men and women who will lay tliemselves out through lectures, preaching, literature, the science of healing, working up a clientele in the grace of friendship, aiming to reach the intellect as well as the heart of the IN THE GREATEST FIELD 119 empire, there is a splendid open door. And better still, for young men and women who combine all the modern culture, the consecrated spirit and the Christlike life, who liave the highest originality and power, and who will capitalise their personality into a passion for saving men, who will lift up Jesus, though they themselves be lifted up on a cross, loho have the enduemcnt in the blessed gifts and i)owcr of the Holy Spirit in their lives — to such there is a career in the foreign mission field, at least as great and as rational as there is at home. "NVc need such men, and need them now, and we need mightily the ministry of intercession in all the churches on our behalf ; because if these tremendous moral changes are to be permanent, they must be so ensured by vital spiritual causes. China as a Mission Field. — China is the greatest mission field in Asia. It is this without a rival. It is so because its great empire is open to missions, its Government is favourable to reforms, and its people are ready for a new civilisation. It is so because the iutiuences that are working upon its religious and political life are taking effect as never before. It is essentially a greater missicm field than India, because India, essentially, is not its own. China was once a synonym for mildew and moss. Now she is moving at a rate which supersedes the rate of momentum at which any other awakening nation ever moved. China is the costliest mission field in the world. And, if it be argued that she has been abnormally slow in ac- cepting Christianity, it should be remembered that massive bodies move slowly, and often, in other circumstances, what is gained in velocity is lost in power. Certainly no nation has ever been less known, more universally I20 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL criticised, or credited with fewer of the graces of humanity, than China. It is possible and probable that China will now accom- plish in a decade what it took Europe a hundred years to understand. The multitude and magnitude of the reform movements are impressive. It is the giant continent among the ancient empires. Its physical features and its populations are unique. In its history, language, literature, classics and religions, government, industries, internal wealth and external influence, China is, l^otli by fact and by conmion consent, the miglitiest Asiatic Colossus. Once a land of mystery and of bafHing impressions, it is now an open book and an open door. The most significant feature is tlie attitude of the highest officials towards missions and civilisation. Not a little disturbed at the audacity of the Christian programme, the mandarinate, nevertheless, patronise and support the missionary presses and publisliing houses. They are, at the same time, regardhig with awe the fact that there are vast numbers of awakeoing people getting their first impressions of liberty. It has been expressed to the writer on more than one occasion, at various lectureships, that the comdction is widely deepening that the old and effete religious are about to declare their decease, and that Christianity is altout to become the national and popular faith. A Clarified View. — China, as a mission field, is better known to-day, because its needs, problems, and acliievc- nients have been viewed on the field itself, rather than from the home offices of its respective mission boards. The sending of the leading missionary secretaries, the deputations representing Sunday-school work, and the A GLITTERING PRIZE 121 splendid type of men sent out to the recent Centenary Meeting of missions in China, cannot but be fraught with great blessing. Stiitesmen, travellers, students, writers, consular officials, and even " special commissioners " and " critics," have found the field with its conditions and results greater than ever tliey had dreamed. China is a rich mine. The greatest and most power- ful nations in tlie world have run awful risks for its immense markets and its opulent products. The great national and territorial burglaries committed on her splendid coast-line aroused the empire to appreciate its own enormous mineral and industrial wealth, and caused it to be armed ready for eventualities. Exploited by Christian men, tlie results netted to the cause of Christian civilisiition would be stupendouf. Left alone to unprincipled speculators (if that were now possible) the crime woukl be as appalling as it would be irremedialjle. Wondrously endowed and well and richly appointed, the whole empire should be evangelised and civilised at any cost. In a recent issue of the London JDailf/ Mail, the following significant words appeared : " Around the immense area of the Pacific Ocean the embattled nations of the world are gathering as the nations gathered around the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. Careful ob- servers universally will agree that the greatest events of the twentieth century probably will be occupied with the rim of this vast saucer." Current human history is proving that such prophetic world-movements are now in being. Considered even on the low plane of commercial and political strategy, there seems to be no other way which is so certain of securing the peace of the world, and of preventing the much -dreaded " yellow peril," than H.U.S. Q 122 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL to conserve ILe inherent faculties of mural, cumniercial, and industrial worth in the Chinese race, and thus keep their war-fever and power-lust from ever gaining an overmastering supremacy. The Great Renaissance. — The mighty renaissance that is ahecting China is not local. The old civil- isation is passing away. The old paganisms, the old superstitions are going. In educational, literary, commercial, diplomatic, industrial, naval, and military circles the changes are indeed startling. Endowed uni- versities and equipped Western schools are being rapidly nndtiplied. Footbinding is prohibited, and the opium curse being eradicated. Temples are being turned into schools in all the provinces, their lands confiscated, and the monies arising tlierefrom utilised for educational purposes. Questions of international law, and the friction caused by extraterritoriality, are being discussed with statesmanlike sagacity. The empire is testing the relative value of European, American, and Japanese instructors in their schools and collegiate halls. There is even the appearance of a new and original puljlic spirit in China. It is asserting itself in the cflusions of patriotic songs. There is a national sense of apprehensiveness at the unwise seizure of strategic " spheres of influence," as well as the lust for concessions in coal mines, quarries, forests, fisheries, etc. The fire of patriotism has caught on in Asia, and a new epoch is inmiinent. In line with these newly moving characters on the scene, the Imperial Government is assisting the students in schools of mining and agriculture, and in naval and military circles. In a brief space of time we shall see the unequalled and magnificent chains of inland waters opened to navigation, A RACE FOR SUPREMACY 123 and possibly the utilisation of the canals by electric and motor boats for the rapid transport of the immense produce of the country. With the ushering in of great trunk lines of railroad, and the consequent development of internal wealth and external influence, there are splendid markets opened up, which will surprise the commercial, and even the industrial and productive world. There is offered, in this wonderful land, covering every variety of physical combinations, splendid scope for every branch of agri- cultural and engineering science to be brought to ita highest state of financial prosperity and mechanical efficiency. Science of Missions. — What an opening for the Christian inventor, merchant, teacher, literary man, to augment and interpret in the highest terms of commercial integrity and indu.strial honour the larger content of the wide range of Christian civilisation ! Social standards need to be raised, economic ideals purified, moral standards invested with the fire of Divine aid. In a word, all the social, moral, educational, and industrial betterment of the masses is a beseeching invitation to superiority to assist inferiority, and for strength to lie gracious unto weakness. The Christian teacher is to - day in the ascendant. He can aid in sanitary and agricultural science, assist in mechanical arts, in the native press, be wise in his atti- tude to political ideals, and be true as well as careful in his interpretation of all practical social problems. All these great opportunities are signals beckoning us onward on the new and vivid horizons which are clearing all about us. The Eev. S. Isett Woodbridge, D.D., writes in this strain : " The science of missions is experimental ; and, 124 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL like all other sciences, it is progressive. Not that the precious story of the Cross in its main purpose varies, but the mode of presentation. Under the conditions which have obtained in China this requires more than ordinary skill, tact, and knowledge. Methods have been growing better ever since its inception in China." What a splendid field is here offered for service ! What an unprecedented challenge is here presented to the wealth, culture, and facilities which are in the hands of the Christian Church to-day for investment ! Is not the very trust capital for this Christ-commissioned service in our own hands ? What a loud, long, and clarion call comes to the rich and the affluent — in their entrusted stewardship — in these last days of unexampled opportunity ! Many are in a position to greatly advance the extension of Christ's Kingdom in the Far East. It is past the day of experimenting. The history and action of the past hundred years of work in mission lands have given us a science of missions. To-day, vast sums of money may be entrusted to these great w^hitening fields to gather in the richest harvests which ever waited for the reaping. " Thoughts that breathe and words that burn " have surged up in our hearts while we have watched the sunrise of new hopes in the faces of China's best youth ; and we have been cheered and inspired in this arduous service while we have seen them " catch on " to some inspiration, and to some guiding principle in the new and Divine life. It should thrill the reader with delight to know that there are, to-day, in China and Japan, and all over Mongolia and Manchuria, thousands of the best educated, sanest, and open-minded young men and young women, whose hearts and minds and newly created THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE 125 affections are being drawn unto the loving heart, transforming power, and redeeming grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Looking for an Apostle. — After a century of heroic effort in the hardest and costliest fightincr-ground of all the Christian centuries, there stands to-day a church of two hundred thousand native Christians, pleading, praying, a nl looking for a man — an apostle, born of their own people, who will champion the faith in China as did Ulfilas, Augustine, Columba, and Boniface, whose service among the Goths, Saxons and Angles supplied the Western world with its basic principles of religious liberty and civilisation. When the churches, either by the catching of a new beatific vision of the conijuest of the world for Christ, or by the revealing searchlight on its awful needs and claims — in a word, when the Church realises as deeply what it means to save as the peo})le realise their great need of salvation, then she will show to the world and to herself some of the sweetest surprises of grace and miracles of redemption. One has written a beauti- fully epigrammatic thought for tlie times : " A stationary church and a moving world means a fatality for both." It is ever true that the Church exists only as its life is generative, transitional, and communicative. Its life currents proceed from a centre and reach out to a circumference. " Let the pulpit give its proper place to the subject that was the vision of prophets, the song of sacred poets, the consolation of the Redeemer, the labour of apostles, the ingathering of the Gentiles ; and missions would have a new standing in the Church, a fresh development in the world." It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole world, 126 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL to-day, is known and accessible to Christianity. The changes and preparations of the century are vivid with prophetic meaning. Primarily each of these splendid facilities has been permitted as a handmaid to the gi'and enterprise of evangelising the nations. The master marches of science in unlocking the treasures of nature, and in pusliing invention after invention ; the swift messengers of electricity in shrinking world-distances, and steam in linking all the continents ; the investment of the concentrated wealth, power, and learning of the world in the hands of Christendom and of the Church of God ; its ascendant dignity and transforming power — all combine to press the fullilling of the great commission of the Christ, and the hastening of the coming of the City of God. Signs of the Morning. — Surely the long night of pagan gloom is about to break. All about us are signals of the morning. As the mists are passing away, the vistas are illuminant with the grand and awful beauty of the hour. One l^y one, the cold and far- away lesser lights that ruled the night are yielding to the warmer tints of a new day. The whole spectacle is beautifully impressive. All over the Far East is felt the flush of that new spiritual radio-energy which is the direct product of a century's evangelisation in its largest mission fields. It has produced " such a light as never shone on land or sea." Is it not an impressive fact that seventy generations of men have passed away since His star first shone in the Oriental sky ? Two millenniums have passed into history since the wise men from the Persian and Chaldean observatories appeared at the gates of the Judean capital with their pregnant inquiry : " Where is He THE STAR IN THE WEST 127 that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen, in the East, His star, and are come to worship llini." ^ It is a long stretch of history from Eden to Betlilelieni, and tlien from Jerusalem on to the twentieth century ; and even yet the complete carrying out of the regal conmiission is lagging. Such a condition has led many thinking souls in the Far East to doubt our own belief in the paramountcy of this claimed universal and abiding religion. Would that it might be true at this unprecedented hour of ojjportunity that the churches at home were awake to the tremendous urgency of their trust powers as stewards of the manifold grace of God ! If there were only an enlightened ctmsciencc on the grandeur and greatness of the work that is being done, an a])preciatiou of the colossal programme before the world's mission fields, a recognition of the higli intellectual and spiritual calibre of the missionary body, a rational conception of the splendid achievements which have been brought about by the irreducible minimum of gifts and expenditure of trust monies ; if the Church only knew these things, and felt these things, and had travail of soul for its common Lord — seeing the great whitening fields of ripening harvests, it would soon wish to share the agony of the Master for the souls of men ; and the missionaries, thus nerved and inspired to greater heroisms, would begin to do exploits in the name of Jesus Christ. ^ The reading of the Sinai Paliiniwest iu Matt. ii. 2, "For we have seen His star from the East," seems to solve a real difficulty. From the Chaldeau plains, or in Persia, the Magi must have seen the star to the west of them en route to Bethlehem. It suggests the words iv t^ dfaroXfj as having reference to the wise men, and not to the star. Such authori- ties as Dr. Adolf Deissmaim, Dr. J. H. Moulton, and Agnes Smith Lewis, D.D., LL.D,, Phil. Dr., Cambridge, are in harmony with this theory. 128 THE CHURCH LOYAL AND POWERFUL Missions are not a mere phase of Christianity. They are Christianity itself. They are the Church's greatest enterprise. They are her chief concern and her marching orders. They constitute the last and fullest command of our now risen and glorified Lord, which is irrevocable, inexorable, and supreme. IX THE ETERNAL PURPOSE H.U.S. 129 " God only knows what the next five years have in store. But no surer means lies ready to our hand with which to move the great nation from centre to circumference with God's great thoughts than the Printed Page ! " — Rev. J. C. Garritt, D.D. " "Wliich in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men. . , . That the nations should be . . . partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel. ... To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." — St. Paul, " It is not, I suppose, possible to exaggerate the importance of the new developments in Chinese educational aspiration. We cannot tell how long, amid the changes and chances of human affairs, the present opportunity and the present welcome will be ours." — The Archbishop of Canterbury. IX THE ETERNAL PURPOSE What a vision of the meaning of that Eternal purpose ilhiniined the life, and shed even at his death a halo of light upon the great Apostle Paul ! See him as he writes with the light of an Italian sun streaming through the chinks of barred windows in his prison- house in the Eternal City. His face is Ht with a glory which is only reflected on the faces of the pure in heart who have seen God. His prison-house may be cold and lone, but the fire of God is ignited within him. With a face lined with toil and pain, chiselled with arduous labours, his hair bleached with long service, his heart attuned to minor keys of pain as well as to paeans of victory, his will indomitable, and his faith clear as the morning — such an one has " the strength of ten, because his heart is pure." He is writing a letter — a love epistle — to the church of his affections in Philippi. It is written with intense pathos and under the shadow of accepted death. Over the seas and mountains and great commercial highways he looks in faith to the church by the shores of the Adriatic Sea. His thoughts are with the church by the riverside. It was one of the first missionary churches founded on the continent of Europe. This church was 131 132 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE numerically and jfinancially small, but it was great in conspicuous service. It abounded in " this grace also " — it ministered to his needs and sufferings. The exordium in this address is rich with praise. " I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now." It was a beautiful tribute. It spoke of their high conception of the Christian life and the service of its accepted stewardship, as well as of the continuity of its service, prayer, and fellowship. In every tremulous line there is heart-break and the touch of tears. The Apostle had fought a good fight, and was looking for the signal to depart. Oh for such a fellowship with the home churches ! Oh for such a relationship on the part of the home churches with our lonely and scattered missionaries in the far- away nightlands where men have not beheld His glory ! The Sign of the Cross. — Calvary's stage is the world ; and its date, and programme, all time. There was only one great missionary society ever chartered and commissioned by our blessed Lord for the discipling of the nations, and that was His own Apostolic Church. The master-passion of our Lord Jesus Christ was His cowpassion. He sanctified, and blessed, and empowered His followers to seek and to save the lost. We are there- fore the heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns of His last will and testament. Ours is a perpetual com- mission. He sealed it with the crimson sign of His sacrificial Cross ; and the Church has — wherever she has been fruitful — worn that crucifixion mark ever since. It is only when the Church has had in the great battlefields THE SACRIFICIAL SIGN 133 of missionary conflict "the marks of the Lord Jesus" upon her, that the blessed fulfilment of the " presence alway," and its ever-accompanying power and benedic- tion, have been with it in saving power and redeeming grace. Ever and always the work of redemption is a really sacrificial service. This principle was enunciated from the very inception and cradle of Christianity. When worldly honours or state assistance or regal thrones were offered the Church, both Jesus and His Apostles dis- countenanced any such political aid or temporal govern- ment. Let the cultured Greeks seek audience with Christ and invite Him to their realms, and the Master lifts up a Cross, and teaches the lesson of the kernel of wheat dying in the fertilising soil of sacrifice to reach a larger, more fruitful, and more abundant life. The great French preacher, La Cordaire, said : " The Church was born crucified." In this same spiritual heroism, Mazzini writes : " This word demands my life- blood." "What a demonstration, too, is in that potent fact that in all His holy ministry our blessed Lord lifted up a life, and not a mere creed or a tenet of a religion. This, too, is just where the great contrast is best seen. Look at the symbols, signs, and emblems of the non- Christian faiths of the world. Here they are in a few brief sentences : The star and crescent represent Mahomet. The ancestral tablet represents Confucius. The revolving wheel represents Buddhism. The sun and moon and stars represent Parseeism. The wooden crucifix represents Eome. The Greatest " If " in the World.— They all lift up a cold and lifeless image, in striking contrast to which 134 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE our Lord Jesus Christ lifts up a life. " Aud I, if I be lifted up " — we have purposely written the if in italics, and the thought is not without significance that there may have been in the heart of our Lord a pang when that hypothesis and provisional " if " was uttered. Was it a momentary wringing of the heart with sorrow in the thought, as He looked across the centuries, that per- haps in the flush of its accepted power and 'prestige, and amid the glamour of its wealth, other things might be lifted up ? And, oh, has it not been sadly so ? We have given other things the pre-eminence, and have almost forgotten that the magnetic, attractive, sympathising Christ is still able to draw all men unto Him. History teaches that failures precede reconstruction, and that they are often the birth -liours of new discoveries. It is so in all the crises of life. At a psychological moment someone announces a " new theology." It is weighed in the balances and found wanting. In itself, it is proved to be an absolute failure ; but it started into expression the deeper conviction in many minds that what was needed was not a new theology but a " new creation." The Apostle Paul, with discriminating spiritual dis- cernment, met these conditions in the early days of Christianity. In his Epistles to the churches at Eome, Corinth, and Galatia he emphasises that grand truth enunciated by our Divine Lord in His conversation with the learned Nicodemus. When the soul is " born from above," then there is " newness of life " ; and when " any man is in Christ," he is a " new creature." When the Church of Christ, in its corporate and individual life, becomes a " new creation," it will experience some glad surprises in the execution 136 For the Reception of "Unwelcome Babies" in China The hole in the wall is the door through which the children are placed. Neither the face of the mother nor the receiver of the babe can be seen by each other. Hence there is no identity. Once in, the child slips down on a sliding shelf and is the property of the institution. It is the saddest commentary on homeless heathendom. Waiting ! This picture, taken by Miss Edna P. Dale of Wuhu, China, shows the crowd of women lining up to the gates of a building known as a heathen nursing-home. It is supported by voluntary contributions, and by the profits of its stock- in-trade. The children are nursed and nourished by poor peasant women, who take the children to their homes and receive a small sum each month on bringing the child back again so that those in charge may see if it is sufficiently nourished. "WHO WILL GO FOR US?" 137 of its heaven-commissioned and world-embracing service of discipling the nations. Nota Bene! — The real vocation of the Church is its missionary evangelisation. In the light of these facts the homeland churches are b\it the garrisons and the transport departments. It is generally admitted that the position of an ambassador abroad demands a better equipment than an early appointment in the Civil service at home. It is equally true of the great mission fields, as well as of diplomatic and government appointments. England sends her most etticient leaders to our colonies, and entrusts the viceroyalty of India — the richest gem in the Empire's crown — to the greatest of her governing statesmen. The reasons for this are apparent. Quality rather than quantity is the indis- pensable requisite. Only those of the highest spiritual and intellectual qualifications should be sent out. Of course, these essentials may not always be combined, but they are vital. The Apostolic Church set apart and ordained some of its ablest men for its aggressive Kingdom-building. Surely an enterprise so colossal, so grand, so far-reaching, so Divine, so great in its ever- widening programme, calls for the choicest and picked men and women to be efficiently equipped as well as truly endowed. Professor Warneck is right in pointing out that mere numbers of missionaries afford no sure guarantee of desired results. Well has Professor Legge urged that " missionaries ought to be the foremost men whom the Christian Church possesses ; tlie men who have intermeddled most with, and gone deepest into all knowledge ; whose intellectual resources are the largest ; whose practical and persuasive ability is the finest, and whose temper is the most under their control ; the most H.U.S, s 138 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE fervent in spirit, the largest in mind, and the most capable in action." Then there is another phase of this soul-stirring service of carrying the Gospel unto the nations. It is the reflex influence for good on the home fields. Churches that have their representative missionaries in heathen lands have returned unto them in double measure the gifts and offerings laid at His shrine. Churches that are missionary in spirit and in life are the churches that are alive in every other good work. Some churches have a chronic insular selfishness so incurably fastened upon them as to disable them from all worthy participation in the Saviour's plan of redeeming the world. The " colossal egoism " of such a church enables it to see nothing greater or smaller than itself. A non-missionary church is an anomaly. It is like a dead dynamo. It has not heat, or light, or power to suffuse or move. It is as a lighthouse with its windows darkened, and becomes an awful peril rather than like a guiding star. It is as a ship without a rudder, or a port of destination, and as such is as a mere eofiin to its passengers and its crew. Churches that are the first to give out are the last to give up. They abound in grace and fruition. Churches that are missionary churches are clear in their testimony to the world. Their lungs and hearts perform the functions of breathing and of circulation. To make the illus- tration as simple as it is clear, it is as if water should cease to flow, blood cease to circulate, light cease to shine ; and the alternatives are inexorable and terribly exacting — water that does not run, stagnates ; blood must circulate or Hfe must terminate ; light must either shine or decline : and missions that do PRAYER AND SERVICE 139 not send must end — this law is axiomatic, scientific, final. A Working Church. — The missionary church is a working church. "What an added force is given to a church where its members are personally realising their responsibility, and act upon it with grace and enthusi- asm ! What fructifying agencies grow up in all its varied departments of service ! Spiritual vision is enlarged. What a prayer-meeting such a church enjoys ! The thrill of partnership is experienced, and service so given is a perpetual benediction. There is macliinery enough, and there are wheels enough in the Church ; what is needed is that the Church shall respond to the call of God, and then will the Holy Spirit move within the wheels. It is a worthy cause, and one which demands a frank, united, systematic, heroic, and worthy effort on the part of the whole Church, each body of churches giving liberally and heroically to its respective Missionary Societies and Boards. There is simply no end to what might be accomplished if the Church — unitedly — gave herself to this supreme and paramount service. A Praying Church. — The missionary church is a praying church. The whole history of missions is a record of the achieving power of believing prayer. A prayerless church is an orphan church. Some churches have discovered the coastline of continents of achieve- ment, blessing, and power by the exercise of intercessory prayer. Mr. John E. Mott, M.A., F.E.G.S., the General Secretary of the World's Student Christian Federation, says : " Everything vital to the success of the world's evangel- isation hinges on prayer. Are thousands of missionaries and tens of thousands of native workers needed ? ' Pray I40 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth labourers into His harvest.' Is a vast increase in gifts required to adequately prosecute the enterprise ? Prayer is the only power that will influence God's people to give with purity of motive and with real sacrifice of self. Prayer alone will overcome the gigantic difficulties which confront the workers in every field. Nothing but prayer will strengthen the weak, tried, and tempted native Christians who have been raised up from lives of sin and degradation, and give them the evangelistic impulse. It is in answer to prayer that the Holy Spirit is poured out in mighty Pentecostal power on the workers and Christian communities in the far-off, needy fields." What a hidden and omnipotent force is here at the disposal of the Church when she is ready and able to appropriate the magnificent resources that are her own inheritance ! There is a note of touching pathos expressed in the following little poem, originally written in Persian, in one of tlie books of the songs of Jaffer. Its application is easily understood : "I know of a land that knows a lord That's neither brave nor true ; But I know of a sword, a sword, a sword Can cut a chain in two. Its edge is sharp and its blade is broad ; I kjiow of a sword, a sworJ, a sword Will cut a chain in two. "I know of a laud that's sunk in shame, "Where true hearts faint and tire. And I know of a name, a name, a name Can set that land on fire. Its sound is a blast, its letters a llame ; I know of a name, a name, a name Will set that land on fire. THE MASTER TEMPTATION 141 "I know of hearts that hate the wrong, That still are leal and true ; And I know of a song, a song, a song Can break a fetter tlirough. Oh, you who long, and long, and long, I'll give you a song, a song, a song ; 'Twill break your fetters through ! " That laud is the nightland of heathendom. The sword is the sword of the Spirit — the Word of God. The name is the only name, Jesus, given among men whereby they can be saved. The song is the conquering song of victory over sin and death. Dr. Henry C. Mabie, Corresponding Secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, writes thus upon the subject : " I have no hesitation in insisting upon the universal duty in Christendom everywhere of immediate appli- cation, without reserve, of all our powers to the evangehsation of the whole world. Certainly, all will agree that tlie duty of eacli generation to its generation is imperative and universal. The surprises of grace, the miracles of converting power, the rapid triumphs of the Gospel, would astonish the whole earth if God were really put to the test. The master temptation of the devil is to seciu'e procrastination on the part of the Church respect- ing the world's evangelisation. Of course, this temptation should be resisted at every point : and if it were, nations would soon be born in a day." Is the Church Ready ? — Is the Church prepared for this grand action ? The times are significaut of great world movements. The social and spiritual solidarity of the Far East are clarion calls to the Church to rise, and guide, and save. The need is vital and imperative. The opportunities 142 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE are rare and are passing away. It is the nick of time to co-operate with God. The vast heathen world is at unrest, and at a fever-point of expectancy. The people are again greeting the Messiah, and seeking audience with Him. Their young men and women are turning in thousands from the dark delusions of " lights that have failed " to the sure clear shining of His star. The faiths of heathendom are undermined and are crumbling away. They stand like great vessels, anchored in the stream — the currents of time flow past them, and each year they are farther behind the spirit of the age and less in harmony with its demands. Shall not the crowning command of our now risen and glorified Lord, linked with the dynamic " all power " and the " all authority," be the crowning mission of the Church ? Such a united action would — as it is proving to-day — heal its divisions, sanctify its spirit, utilise its power, trade its talents, enlarge its stewardship, and glorify its evangelism. The cry of John Wesley, " My parish is the world," should be the cry of every disciple. It would mean such a vision of the world's great need, and the awful reality of the fact that two millenniums after our Lord's great commission there are 1,000,000,000 of heathen who are still in the darkness of the shadow of death! At the present census rate of 500,000,000 of Christian peoples, this means that each Christian would have to evangelise but two, and the work would be done. Until some great persecution comes upon the Church, some " dark ages," some period of soul - petrifying callosity of heart and mind, some great falling away from the faith — and are we not witnessing such to- day ? — the Church will not be lifted out of itself ! Who can tell what will be the awakening trumpet to call the A SUDDEN CONSUMMATION 143 Church to prayer and to the catching of a new vision of Calvary ? Such an experience would mean and spell out a new preparation, new prayer, a new Pentecost ; and its resultant larger plan, deeper purposes, and highest power. Joseph Cook said : " World-wide evangelism is the crowning glory of the Church." The words of Dr. Eichard S. Storrs impressively suggest the likeness of our own generation to the Apostolic Age, as a time for world-wide preaching of the Gospel : " I cannot think it exaggeration to say, in view of the changes thus occurring during the century, that the astonishing preparation of the world for the first pro- clamation of the Master in it is now followed, if not surpassed, by a majestic preparation of mankind for such a testimony to be given to Him as hitherto no dream of the heart has imagined to be possible. . . . The mar- vellous secular progress of mankind in the last eighty years, the unexpected advancements or recessions of states, with the closer connections arising between them, and the opening of all lands to the moral forces dominant in Christendom — these give an equally majestic oppor- tunity, in our time, for the furthest and swiftest exhibition of Him in whom the world has its help and its hope. Gradual preparation, ultimating in sudden consummation, is often God's method in history. It was so before the coming of the Master. It was so before the conversion of the Empire. It was so, signally, before the Reformation. It seems to be so in our day." The Brave and Advancing Minority. — In the pre- sent highly rarefied atmosphere, some of the clearest observations of the field are being made. The mists are 144 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE passing away. Young China, and young Japan, and young Korea are moving out of their cloud-world of fancy on to the terra firma of the certainties, realities, and privi- leges, as well as the responsibilities of the Christian life and faith. From the watch-towers all over Asia — in far- away Thibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, on the steppes of the Himalayas, across the immense Chinese plains, and on to Korea, and sunny Japan — the bugle blast is clear and loud that the morning cometh ! Although the redeemed element is still the brave and advancing minority, they are among literati and merchant alike their brightest hope. The displacement of heathen- ism has called for new hopes and new ideals. In its advocacy of pure literature and the science of healing, its advances in mechanical arts, its conveniences of life, its political improvements, its aid in international comity, its cheer in the struggles of life, its exaltation of home and motherhood ; in its fruits of righteousness, peace, purity, and everlasting hope in the hearts of men and women, who had almost doubted their own humanity or Divine relationships ; by its superiority in the mastery of the leading nations of the earth — the argument is massed, challenged, and made invincible, that it is the faith and action of Jesus Christ and His Apostles that has proved itself able not only to reform but to re- generate the whole human race. When one of our greatest missionaries, David Hill, lay dying in the heart of China, he said with almost his last breath : " We want more of the Spirit's power. We can do nothing without that." It is a significant fact that the key to the future of China, Japan, and Korea is in the attitude of the choicest students in our Christian colleges in those lands. THE STUDENT PROBLEM 145 Japan is leading the Orient — whither ? With its daring clnvahy, its intense loyalty, its national sohdarity, and with its eyes and mind open toward enlightenment, it may lead the Asian continent into the light and truth of a new era. Fletcher S. Brockman, B.A., the General Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Associations of China, Japan, and Korea, whose splendid service and experience make weighty his testimony, writes : " The importance of the work cannot be over-estimated. These students come largely from the wealthiest and most influential families of the Empire. Every province of China and Manchuria is represented. The returned students from Japan are in complete control of affairs. They will soon be in control of the Government itself. They are in the ascendant in the colleges and universities. Simply to make a favourable impression upon them for Christianity will pave the way for all missionary work during the next fifty years, and make immeasurably easier the progress of the Christian Church. If nothing can be done for them, on the other hand, they will saturate China with materialistic and anti- Christian ideas — not to say, what is often the case, revolutionary and anarchistic ideas. When one understands the strategic importance of these men, it does not seem strange that a man like Dr. Arthur Smith should have said recently in a public address, before a large body of missionaries in Kuling, China, that it was possible for the young men who were connected with the great student enterprise in Tokio, to do more during this next year than all the rest of the missionaries in China put together." A Strategic Moment. — The present strategic moment H.U.S. T 146 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE should be seized and utilised. It is a golden oppor- tunity. To-day it is ours. To-morrow it may have passed away. In the great awakening that has come to the Far East there are also grave perils. These notes of warning and of appeal were sounded forth at the recent United Centenary Meeting of Protestant Missions in China, held in the Eoyal Albert Hall. The situation was summed up by the Eev. Dr. Wardlaw Thompson (Secretary of the London Missionary Society) : "The Chinese want education. They will get it, whether we of the missionary associations give it them or not. China is not wanting our Christianity, except in some cases. What it wants to do is to learn the secret that has made Western nations strong in the ■world — things to make them equal in their manufactures, things to make them strong to defend themselves against us in war. " But what is that to give to China, if we are going to destroy the ethical system which the Chinese had in the beginning ? If we are going to let China have the benefits of all the other system without Christianity, woe betide us ! "We shall be raising up a dragon in the world of portentous size and strength. We shall have a com- petitor in the world without scruple, without conscience. Therefore the responsibility of the Christian Church at the present time is a tremendous one. We can give to China, more than any other nation, those things that China wants to learn. We have got to give China those things which have really made us great — those great spiritual truths, which are life and light in Jesus Christ." The mind of the Chinese, which has been lying fallow for centuries, is germinating into a new life. It suggests PASSING OPPORTUNITIES 147 the thought that God has, iu His marvellous wisdom, preserved and conserved all the inherent, accumulating, and vital powers of this really great people for the consummation of some splendid achievements in harmony with His Divine purposes. While many are wondering what will be the outcome in the theatre of strange movements being played in China, Korea, Japan, and Siam, the great Christian organisations are awake and at work. They are carefully formulating vast schemes for influencing the best minds and through them the awakening masses in all classes of society. The situa- tion presents both a revolution and an opportunity. Ancient temples are being changed into schools of living ideas. Heathen extravagancies in idolatrous processions are being prohibited. Edicts from the Imperial throne announce a new era. There is a rush for reform. The new telegraph has given the empire a new nervous system, and railroads are now the gushing arteries of its new being. The system of pubhc examinations which had been in vogue for thirteen centuries has been abolished with a single stroke of the vermillion pen from the Imperial palace. All the universities and new colleges are full of bright, eager, alert students. There never was a time when they were more susceptible to Christian influences. If the Christian Church fails to meet this demand with an adequate supply of the best Christian teachers, it is safe to say that the mind of the nation will swing to and be influenced by cold materialistic tendencies, and result in a mere intellectual conversion. A Clarion Call. — From the Great Centenary Con- ference in Shanghai comes a clarion call for five hundred 148 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE of the best men that the universities of Europe and America can send out as a first instalment to occupy the vast number of educational appointments which are open to us. The needs are urgent, imperative, and supreme. The evangelisation of the whole empire is within the grasp of the Christian Church. It is the oldest and greatest of the empires of antiquity, and the immense results of its conversion will be commensurate with its own peculiar power and greatness. History teaches that all great and permanent changes are costly. Nor are they accomplished in a hurry. The transformation of such an immense empire with all its unplumbed potentialities may be the crowning miracle of all the Christian centuries. It is recorded of Chai Yung, one of the Emperors of the Sung dynasty, that, during a great crisis in the history of the State, and when the people were striving towards higher ideals, he caused hundreds of idols to be melted into money, and then sent it about doing good. It is the time for the Church to melt her myriad idols of extravagance and selfishness. It is the time for sacrificial gifts in men and means. It is the time for prevailing and achieving prayer. It is a magnificent opportunity for the Church to achieve its grandest success, and secure this great, rich, and worthy gem among the empires, and in adoration cast it at the feet of Him who redeemed it with His own precious blood ; while we sing — "Come, then, and added to Thy many crowns. Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest, Due to Thy last and most effectual work, Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world." THE DIVINE LEVERAGE 149 Archimedes said he could lift the world if he had a place to put his fulcrum. The world needs to be lifted. The lifting power of God is the Gospel of Christ. But is it uot true that even the power of God uses both the leverage and the fulcrum to accomplish its best results ? The manifold wisdom and power of God were to be made known by the individual units in the Church. God works through and by means of regenerated human souls to lift the world. Spirit-guided and Spirit-filled souls are His leverage. When these — the "messsengers of the churches " — are supported by the fulcrum of the prayers and practical help of those at home, it is then that the world is lifted out of its moral degradation into the spiritual realm of God's grace and truth. Wanted ! A Missionary Church. — The New Testa- ment knows no other than a missionary church. The Epistles teach that its missionary offerings, like a mirror, reflected its real life and character. It re- garded the carrying out of the imperial commission as its chief concern. Church buildings, government and organisation were mere incidents beside the paramount work of discipling the nations. This was the Divine oxygen that put hfe and strength into every department of the apostolic programme. The same principle is generative of the same results to-day. The churches that are missionary in spirit are the churches that are winning souls. They enter into the joys of partnership with Christ in service. Their prayer-power is still able to remove mountains. They have learned the secret of a sacrificial and consequently fruitful life. Such a church is like a tree planted by the river of God ; its leaves do not wither, its centre of life grows stronger as its branches reach out, and in the ISO THE ETERNAL PURPOSE fervent atmosphere of sacrifice it ripens into fruition all the Christian graces. There is a very beautiful story told of an artist who was once asked to paint a picture of a decaying church. To the astonishment of many, instead of putting on the canvas an old, tottering ruin, the artist painted a stately edifice of modern grandeur. Through the open portals could be seen the richly carved pulpit, the magnificent organ, and the beautiful stained-glass windows. Within the grand entrance, guarded on either side by a " pillar of the church " in spotless apparel and glittering jewellery, was an offering-plate of elaborate design, for the " offerings " of fashionable worshippers. But — and here the artist's conception of a decaying church was made known — right above the ofiering-plate, suspended from a nail in the wall, there hung a square box, very simply painted, and bearing the legend, " Collection for Foreign Missions," but right over the slot, through which certain contributions ought to have gone, he had painted a huge cobweb ! The same is true of our individual Christian life. We live only as we grow, and we grow only as we use our talents. The measure of our personal responsibility to Christ is the measure of our individual endowments. Only the self-emptied servant knows the secret of that blessed relationship which finds it more blessed to give than to receive. From out of our universities and business colleges there are being drafted with feverish haste the sonS'.and daughters of our homeland to accept positions of trust in diplomatic and commercial service. They are willingly given up and sent out on the cold calculation of THE SUPREME QUESTION 151 lucrative advancement. There is little or no talk of sacrifice. They are overwhelmed with congratulations. Before the Church, to-day, stands the Saviour, pointing with His pierced hands to the Cross — the sacrificial sign and emblem of the redemption of the race — and He is calling for witnesses. " Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us ? Then said I, Here am I ; send me." To the great and whitening harvest fields of missions in Asia — the awakening continent — how few are offering themselves foi' service ! In earlier parts of this work we have written of the magnificent openings that are presented to the consecrated youth in our colleges and churches. It is a icnique opportunity for the largest investment of men and m^ans the churches have ever placed at tlu service of Christ. To the prayerful consideration of the reader, who, through this personal and individual appeal, there should come the " still, small voice " calling him to the holy and honoured service of the mission field, let me, in aU love and sincerity, offer my own personal testimony. The missionary life is a walk with God, a service with Jesus Christ, and a communion and fellowship with the Holy Spirit. It is a blessed life. It is a peerless service. It is a supreme honour. It is a life of strenuous, continuous, and sacrificial toil. It is the place where the promised Presence is fulfilled in its richest benedictions. It is the place where the Christian life may be sounded to its deepest depths and rise to its rarest heights. It is the conviction of the three thousand eight hundred missionaries in China that the Church has 152 THE ETERNAL PURPOSE never risen to anything like a comprehension of what God waits to do when the Church is sacrificial, united, and prayerfully in line for the consummation of His Eternal purpose. Whatever the future has in store for China — and the keenest sight breaks down at the horizon — one hardly dares predict ; but one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that the last crack of doom for heathenism has sounded ! China will never return to its former state of isolation and conservatism ; but the indications warn us that she may attain power without restraint, and knowledge without wisdom. In this transition stage of the Empire's life, Chris- tianity is the young and strong giant that proposes to change its character, give it new shape and guide it into new issues. Whether or no the young and progressive China will be allured to a mere intellectual renaissance, or whether the rapidly advancing ascendancy of the Christian con- tent will, through its volume and variety of forces, woo and win the heart and mind of its newly formative youth, and through them its masses of millions, to a spiritual as well as intellectual regeneration, is the supreme question of the hour. *' The rudiments of empire here, Are plastic yet, and warm ; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form." PRINTED IN ENGLAND MISSIONS IN CHINA FROM 1807 TO 1907 153 WORK ACCOMPLISHED WORK TO BE DONE ^issionnrn Wiavheva 4,558 Foreign Missiouarie^s (including wives) have, during the century, left home and country for work in China. Of these 3,800 are still li\'ing and working in China, while 223 (including children) have sutfered martyr- dom. 9,900 Chinese Helpers are now en- gaged in the same work. (S>}jintst Cljrtstians 154,000 Communicants, or including baptized children 178,000, re- present the Christian com- munity on December 31st, 1905. It is estimated that there are about 750,000 Adherents to the Christian Church. 50,000 Chinese Christians have, during the century, by martyrdom or natural death, joined the Church above. (JTHiEs anis Stations ©pcneir 632 Central stations and 5,102 out- stations have been opened. These Centres have 166 Hospitals and 241 Dispensaries and 2,585 Christian Schools. 2,529,977 Scriptures were circulated in China last year, while 33,855,239 have been circulated during the cent\xry. Of this number, only 379,243 are whole Bibles, and 2,347,057 whole New Testaments. ^tssionarn 'Bolorhsrs 16,000 Foreign Missionaries are needed, if there is to be one for every 25,000 of the population. 160,000 Chinese Helpers are needed, if there is to be one for every 2,500 Chinese. There are 44,000 Ordained ministers in Great Britain alone, or about one to evei-y 1,000 persons. ®IjinEfi£ llon-ffiijrtBtians There are still about 2,600 Non-Christian Chinese to every Chinese Christian. There are 80 millions of men alone in China, which is more than the whole population of men, women, and children in the United States of America. The majority of these have but a vague idea of Chris- tianity. ffiiiifiB, tic, anoccuptcit 1,557 of the 2,033 walled cities of China have as yet no resilient missionary. Tens of thousands of towns and villages have no centre of Gospel Light. No province is yet ade- quately worked. ®Ij8 ^tripiurcB 160 Years would be needed, at last year's rate, to give every person in China even one copy of a Scripture portion. Even after a centixry's work, of every 1,000 people 999 have no Bible, even if every copy ever printed were still in use. "We must not forget that by failing to advance now, when there are so many favouring circumstances, we are deferring the world's evangelization beyond our own day, are seriously mortgaging the future, and are hindering the achievements of our successors. The secret of victory, Napoleon said, is to bring up the reserves when the struggle is at its crisis." — John R. Mott. H.U.S. U BIBLIOGEAPHY Works consulted in the preparation of this volume : — Church History . Neander. History of Christian Doctrine . ■ Fisher. The Uplift of China . Dr. Arthur Smith. Christ Triumphant through the Years , Bentley. Universal Beliefs Burr. China's Past and Present Holcombe. Gksta Christi .... Brace. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon. Dragon, Image, and Demon . . Du Bose. Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets Baring-Gould. Chinese Superstitions , Vale. Chinese Buddhism Edkius. History of the Ft,ef or mat ion D'Aubign^. Primeval Man Unveiled Gall. Paradise Lost .... Milton. The Witness of the Stars Bullinger. Evangelisation of the World . Mott. Chinese Empire Broomhall. The Reshaping of the Far East . Putman Weale. China under the Searchlight . W. A. Cornaby. A Voice from China, . . Dr. Griffith John. ChiiM and Religion E. H. Parker. Learn ..... H. E. Chang chih'-tuug Conflict of Christianity ivith Heathenism 'Uhlhorn. Modern Missions in the East . Lawrence. Ten Great Religions Clarke. The Yang-Tse Valley and Beyond Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop Princeton Theoloqical , Seminary ybraries 1 1012 01203 2944 DATE DUE ''^2S»^ ■^ 1t&«R'*WS«^ a GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. m f 1 »1 UH«i( «* » Wil J ■ ■ ,^*^t*iMiMmim