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MCWHINNEY. 
 
THE 
 
 _ CHINESE PROBLEM 
 
 or 
 
 Missionary Mistakes 
 by 
 T. M. McWHINNEY, D.D., LLD., 
 Author of 
 
 “Heavenly Recognition,” “Reason and Revelation,” 
 a “Crime Legalized,” “Eighth Wonder,” 
 “Ethical Science,” and “Christ 
 Our Creed.” 
 
 January, 1901. 
 
 PRICE, 25 CENTS. 
 
 CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 
 DAYTON, OHIO. 
 J. N., HESS, AGENT. 
 
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To 
 thewoanse 
 of better methods in for- 
 eign missionary work, based on 
 intelligence, which must pioneer the Gospel, 
 and the Christ religion of love, which proposes to 
 subdue the world by the “Sword of 
 the Spirit,” this booklet is 
 aiovGht 110 Nast ea 
 erat © ch te 
 ed. 
 
The 
 world will not 
 be brought to believe in 
 Jesus as ‘‘God manifest in the 
 flesh,” through the instrumentality 
 of a divided priesthood. Hence that peer- 
 less prayer in the very presence of an awful death, 
 ‘‘That they all may be one; as thou Father 
 art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
 may be one in us; that the 
 world may believe that 
 thou hast sent 
 
 ” 
 
 me. 
 
The Chinese Problem, 
 
 PREFATORY. 
 
 In the light of Christian ethics, how shall Aryan 
 civilization deal with Mongolian ignorance, supersti- 
 tion and idolatry? A more profound and humane 
 question than ¢/zs never stirred the brain and heart 
 of Europe and America. Not only millions of money 
 and common humanity, but alas! the blood of the 
 slain, in pitiful accents, cry loudly for a righteous 
 solution of this mighty problem. The paltry out- 
 come of one hundred years of misdirected service, of 
 wasted treasury, and of innocent blood, should lead 
 every soul, consecrated to the cause of humanity, 
 prayerfully to look into the methods of missionary 
 work in the Celestial Empire. Possibly, there is a 
 better way! © 
 
 At the very threshold of this discussion the author 
 is confronted with the fact that the views sought to 
 be maintained in this booklet are not in keeping with 
 the popular thought! Conscious duty, however, 
 especially to the aged, is vastly more important than 
 it is to catch the public ear. Besides, we are re- 
 minded that majorities are not always right, but 
 usually wrong! It always has been so, is so now, 
 and perhaps will be so until the millennium. For 
 example, we believe that Martin Luther was in the 
 
6 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 right, though he stoodalone. Socrates was the most 
 venerable sage and profound philosopher of Greece, 
 yet he was compelled to drink the hemlock. 
 
 While we may pity and commiserate the man who 
 has the temerity to pit himself against popular senti- 
 ment, nevertheless, intelligence and charity will give 
 him a patient hearing and an honorable criticism. 
 Truth asks nothing more, certainly it should have 
 nothing less, from thinking readers. 
 
 But just here we are met with an almost insuper- 
 able difficulty in our efforts at honest and unprej- 
 udiced criticism. We are creatures of habit. Habit 
 is hard to change. Fora hundred years our fathers 
 and we have been in the Aadzt of thinking that the 
 best method of saving China is to send the mission- 
 ary in advance of the school-teacher; build the church 
 and afterward the school-house; study the Chinese 
 language before teaching them the English; let the 
 missionary go and tell those degraded people the 
 matchless story of the Cross, and on the heels of it 
 we will send our Christian school-teachers and pro- 
 fessors, build our school-houses and colleges, and 
 thus train those benighted Mongolians along lines 
 of art, philosophy, discovery, invention, the richest 
 literature of the world, and by intellectual develop- 
 ment,’ enable those semi-barbarous people to com- 
 prehend something of the heights, depths and 
 breadths of our Christian civilization ! 
 
 While in the presence of this Aadit of thinking for 
 the last one hundred years, it seems almost like mad- 
 ness for one to present any other method, yet it is the 
 object of this little book to show that this mode of 
 
PREFATORY. Wi 
 
 operation, during the last century, has been to re- 
 verse unwittingly the divine order by putting religion 
 before zuzteligence, and thus thwarting the righteous 
 purpose of the great Protestant church. 
 
 Let it be distinctly understood and emphasized, ~ 
 that in virtue of the relation we sustain to our breth- 
 ren of the Celestial Empire, it becomes our duty 
 to give them the inestimable benefit of our religion 
 of love. It is not the purpose of the author to 
 call in question the sacred relation we sustain to 
 those unfortunate people, and the lofty obligation 
 that grows out of that relation, but only to criticise 
 the methods by which this sublime end may become 
 an accomplished fact. It is only an humble effort to 
 point out a ‘‘more excellent way;” a mode of opera- 
 tion more in keeping with the spirit and life of a 
 religion, the central and fundamental truth of which 
 is ‘‘Love to God and love to humanity.” To put it 
 in concise, terse, and unmistakable terms, it pur- 
 poses to show that China will never be made Chris- 
 tian by the cruel methods of the gunboat, the can- 
 non, the musketry, the sword and the awful slaughter 
 of the innocent. 
 
 In the presence of God, and in the light of recent 
 history, we solemnly aver that blood and carnage 
 have been the necessary results of our modern methods 
 of Christianizing bleeding China. Our missionaries, 
 good as they are, and self-sacrificing as they have 
 been, are, nevertheless, at this hour expecting our 
 Government to protect them by the American army, 
 whose business will be to butcher, if need be, the 
 necessarily ignorant and superstitious. Those dear 
 
8 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 brothers seem to have forgotten that ‘‘the weapons 
 of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through 
 God.” A Christian may be, and often has been, 
 called upon to sacrifice his life for his religion, but 
 certainly he is not called upon to preach the Gospel 
 of love to a people, some of whom must be slaugh- 
 tered, so that the other some may be saved! 
 
 The object herein contemplated is not to oppose 
 missionary work, but kindly to show that the present 
 method of attempting to Christianize a people who 
 are degraded by the doctrine of polytheism and 
 idolatry, unintentionally disregards the divine law of 
 preparation, ignores the instruction of the Master in 
 His commission, violates a fundamental law of 
 psychology, and hence, the pitiful outcome. We 
 purpose to make plain the fact that our present mode 
 of dealing with China, in our missionary effort, is de- 
 void of all sound logic, of all sound reason, and that 
 there is a better way. 
 
 The author is not unmindful of the fact that some 
 will read the following pages in the spirit of stoic in- 
 difference; others, whose traditional thought has been 
 fossilized, will simply ignore their arguments and go 
 right on thinking and doing as they have formerly 
 done; while still others, with reason on the throne 
 and in the spirit and love of the truth, will weigh 
 and carefully ponder every suggestion. It is only 
 for the benefit of the latter and through them the 
 hope of establishing better methods in foreign mis- 
 sionary fields, that this booklet is hopefully written. 
 
THE LAW OF PREPARATION. 0) 
 
 SECTION (1) 
 The Law of Preparation. 
 
 First, in the administration of divine affairs, this 
 law is more fixed than the stars. Intelligence re- 
 quires no proof of the fact that all great movements, 
 in the physical and moral universe, have been pre- 
 ceded by wise preparation. 
 
 (1) Only a glance at the geological changes in 
 the earth’s history, getting it ready as a home for 
 man, illustrates this proposition. From the time this 
 globe was thrown from the sun, a nebulous ball of 
 fire, until now, each epoch has been preceded by 
 ages of preliminary steps. Infinite wisdom and 
 benevolence were steadily at work, one step pre- 
 paring for another, and another, and still another. 
 It required untold ages of preparation to get the 
 earth ready for the growth of the vegetable and the 
 introduction of the animal kingdoms; and other ages 
 to prepare man to be soinething else than a mere 
 animal running on his hind legs, ‘‘seeking whom he 
 might devour.’’ And as preparatory evolution is 
 going on now, as ever before, ‘‘it doth not yet ap- 
 pear” what this earthly home shall be, only this, that 
 the wise and benevolent improvements of the past 
 are prophetic of a sublimely beautiful outcome. 
 
10 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 (2) The intellectual, social, moral, and religious 
 sciences are but the counterpart of man’s intellectual, 
 social, moral and religious nature. The fact to be 
 remembered is, that all these sciences are divinely 
 graded to meet the capacity of the human mind. 
 Mastering the first little truth, the mind is thus pr- 
 pared to comprehend the next higher truth, and the 
 next and the next, until it can measure the distance 
 to the Pleiades. To undertake to read before we 
 have learned the A B C, or to study astronomy 
 before we have studied mathematics, is to reverse the 
 divine order and to end in hopeless failure. 
 
 In preparing the ignorant people of China, how- 
 ever, we have the double duty not only of teaching 
 them the elementary truths, by which they may be 
 able to comprehend the central, fundamental and 
 matchless truth of God as Father, but we must first 
 eliminate from their minds the rubbish of polytheism, 
 idolatry and superstition, which has been accumu- 
 lating for two thousand years. This thought, how- 
 ever, will be illustrated in another section. 
 
 To preach the lofty truths of the gospel to those 
 benighted people without such preparation, is unwit- 
 tingly to violate the divine command, ‘‘Cast not your 
 pearls before swine, lest they trample them under 
 their feet ahd turn again and rend you.” That is 
 precisely what is being done now in China, as we 
 shall see later on. 
 
 Secondly, preparation not only characterizes all 
 the works of God, but it is a law universally observed 
 by man along all lines of art, science, business, and 
 in everything else, except in his haste to convert 
 
THE LAW OF PREPARATION. RE 
 
 China! Here, it seems that we have allowed a 
 ‘zeal without knowledge,” sectism, or something 
 else, to get the better of our judgment. A father 
 who would send his seven year old boy to school to 
 study geometry before he is able to read, would be 
 considered a subject fit to be kept at the expense of 
 the State. The farmer who would sow his wheat 
 before he had prepared the ground with plow and 
 harrow, would be adjudged by the court as in great 
 need of having a guardian. All enterprises, great 
 and small, human or divine, observe the universal 
 law of preparation, save the stupendous business of 
 converting poor superstitious China! And by vio- 
 lating this law, we have illustrated the old adage, 
 ‘Haste makes waste.”’ 
 
 Evil consequences attend the violation of this 
 universal law of preparation, with the certainty of 
 cause and effect. Surely the heart-sickening results 
 that have been passing in panoramic review during 
 the last twelve months, should convince every sober- 
 minded person that there is something radically 
 wrong in our mode of dealing with the Celestials, 
 and that the urgent demand of the hour is, that we 
 prayerfully ‘‘ask for the old paths,” or for God’s way 
 of dealing with superstition and idolatry. 
 
12 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 SECTION (II) 
 Preparation for Christ’s Coming. 
 
 % 
 
 The question has been asked again and again, if 
 the salvation of the race depended on the mission of 
 Christ, why was his coming deferred for four thou- 
 sand years? The obvious answer is, the world was 
 not ready; it was too zgnorant to comprehend His 
 matchless truth. The history of civilization and the 
 divine logic of the plan of salvation clearly show that 
 He waited for the world’s preparation. Previously to 
 the flood, for example, there was no civilization 
 worthy of the name. The divine side of the con- 
 troversy between God and man, of finally Christian- 
 izing the race, was perfect at the beginning, and only 
 the unprepared condition of the human side made it 
 necessary for Christ to defer His coming. 
 
 First. The soul’s native intellectuality, morality 
 and religiosity were pronounced ‘‘Good’’ at the 
 beginning; yet it required three thousand years of 
 training under such characters as Enoch, Noah and 
 Abraham, for these germs of manhood to be suffi- 
 ciently developed to warrant the coming of Moses, 
 whose grand mission was to proclaim in the face of 
 universal polytheism, the sublime doctrine of One 
 God and thus lay the foundation of all true religion. 
 
PREPARATION FOR CHRIST'S COMING. 13 
 
 Second. To get the world ready for the coming of 
 the Christ, whose immeasurable mission was to re- 
 veal the Fatherly character of that God, it required 
 even more than ¢ex centurzes, under the leadership of 
 such noble souls as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Malachi, to 
 ‘prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.” 
 ‘“‘The law,’ which established the doctrine of one 
 God, ‘‘was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” 
 
 Third. Even at the end of forty centuries only a 
 comparatively few of the leaders of public thought 
 were prepared to hear the final proclamation, ‘‘God 
 is love.”’ This truth will be illustrated further on. 
 Jerusalem being the conceded center of the best 
 civilization known to the race, the commission was 
 given to the twelve apostles, to begin at Jerusalem. 
 Nor were they allowed to go into any other city only 
 as they were welcome. The Master said, ‘‘Into what- 
 soever city you enter, and they receive you not, go 
 your way.” 
 
 Pause right here! Can words be plainer, going to 
 show that the gospel must not be forced on any city? 
 I submit this proposition: If our missionaries to the 
 Celestial Empire had obeyed this one divine injunc- 
 tion, then in that event they had gone their way 
 from one city to another all over China without stop- 
 ping anywhere! Jn the light of history, we solemnly 
 aver that not a solitary city in China during the last 
 hundred years has made these misstonartes welcome, in 
 the sense of making their religion self-sustaining. This 
 Jesus required, as we shall see. 
 
 It was and is a clear case of forcible entry and that, 
 too, at the point of the sword. Nothing, absolutely 
 
14 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 nothing but the strong arm of international law, 
 backed by an invincible army, has kept public senti- 
 ment in China from annihilating all the missionaries 
 and their converts. 
 
 Only remove the monster gunboats, the glistening 
 bayonets, and the invincible armies of Europe and 
 America, and the Boxer movement would sweep 
 over the Celestial Empire like fire in dry stubble, 
 until all the missionaries and their converts would be 
 cruelly slaughtered. The missionaries would ‘go 
 their way,’’ but for powder and lead. 
 
 We submit for your prayerful thought, if in the light 
 of the gospel of love, we have any right hus to force 
 ourselves into the national home of other people? Is 
 it not a most flagrant violation of the golden rule? 
 Would we wish China or any other race of people 
 to compel us, at the point of the sword, to accept 
 their religion? Justa little honest thinking will en- 
 able us to see, as God sees, that we are acting upon 
 the false and selfish theory that ‘‘might makes right.” 
 
 We submit further, if the blessed proclamation, ‘“‘On 
 earth peace, good-will to men,’’ does not imply an 
 ‘Open door,” a ‘‘Hearty welcome,” the promise of 
 a ‘‘Ripe harvest,’ and the kind invitation, ‘‘Come 
 over and help us.” The burning question of the 
 hour is, What will bring China to this happy state of 
 mind? Nothing, absolutely nothing but a long pro- 
 cess of preparation. ‘‘The mills of the gods grind 
 slowly but finely.’”’ We must first begin right, and 
 then ‘‘make haste by going slow.” 
 
THE LORD’S COMMISSION. 15 
 
 SECTION (Ii) 
 
 Our Lord’s Commission. 
 
 . The command, ‘‘Go ye into all the world and 
 preach the gospel to every creature,’”’ should be in- 
 terpreted in the light of historic fact, and in keeping 
 with the laws of Biblical exegesis. As commonly 
 quoted, it is, seemingly, without the slightest refer- 
 ence to either. Only go without sense or reason, 
 anywhere and everywhere, and as ye go, preach. 
 Whereas, we should carefully consider the condztzons 
 of the world at the time the command was given. 
 Furthermore, we should remember that our divine 
 Lord distinctly told his disciples where to begin, 
 where to go and where wot to stay. Men of thought 
 and moderation, therefore, will first prayerfully take 
 into account the state of the world at the time the 
 commission was given. On this point two facts are 
 marvelously manifest: 
 
 First. At the coming of the Christ the world was 
 at peace. Previously to that time the history of our 
 race was little else than that of cruel war. Fora wise 
 and benevolent purpose, it was divinely ordered that 
 at the inauguration of the new dispensation, there 
 should be a time of universal quiet, so that the 
 
16 THE CHINESE PROBLEM, 
 
 ‘Prince of Peace” might be proclaimed as having 
 arisen from the dead, and divinely commissioned to 
 “show us the Father.’’ But for such unlimited 
 peace, there could have been no such universal gath- 
 ering. This was ‘‘the Lord’s doing.” 
 
 Secondly. Jesus was born at a time, not only of 
 universal peace, but when intelligence and consequent 
 civilization were more equally distributed among the 
 nations of earth than ever before or since. In the 
 light of this fact, together with the foregoing, the 
 command, ‘‘Go ye into a// the world,”’ was deeply sig- « 
 nificant then as compared with what it would be now. 
 
 To see this fact clear as a sunbeam, we need only 
 glance at the general condition of the nations of the 
 earth at that time and then think of what they are 
 now. India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, China, and 
 Rome, through divinely appointed instrumentalities, 
 had at that time reached the zenith of their glory. 
 It will be interesting and profitable for the reader to 
 follow carefully these historic footprints of Fatherly 
 benevolence, as herein given. 
 
 (1) History records the providential fact that our 
 modern civilization was first established by the 
 Aryans in central Asia, some four thousand years 
 ago. While all the rest of the human race was 
 marauding over the world much after the fashion of 
 wild animals, these Aryans stopped their roving and 
 formed a community. From Max Mueller and oth- 
 ers, we learn that they established domestic relations, 
 and were first to give the sacred names father, 
 mother, brother, sister, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, 
 etc. They built houses, towns, and established 
 
THE LORD’S COMMISSION. 17 
 
 municipal government. They domesticated animals, 
 trained the ox to the yoke, and cultivated the soil. 
 By their continuous and persistent thinking along 
 lines of art, science, morals and religion, they es- 
 tablished the Sanscrit language which has proved to 
 be the mother of all tongues. 
 
 More and better, these Aryans, under God, lifted 
 themselves out of the depths of ignorance, up and 
 still up to the sublime doctrine of the unity of the 
 universe and the consequent unity of God. The fact 
 to be distinctly remembered is, that these Aryan 
 families at the end of about two hundred years, had 
 built up a civilization and an empire founded upon 
 the sublime doctrine of pure monotheism. Those who 
 believe in the precious truth of God as universal 
 Father, and man as universal brother, will readily 
 see the wise and benevolent hand of God directing 
 these Aryans to stop their wild roving and establish 
 a mighty kingdom based on the doctrine of one God. 
 
 (2) Nor is it any less marvelously benevolent that 
 at the end of about two centuries this monotheistic 
 empire should be disintegrated and scattered to the 
 various parts of the globe. 
 
 (a) History tells us that on the breaking up of 
 this first civilization some of these Aryan families 
 moved into southern Asia, and after driving out the 
 “Black Skins,’’ founded the Indian Empire, the 
 like of which the world had not known. At the 
 birth of Christ, they counted among their citizens, 
 philosophers, scholars, statesmen, and orators by the 
 thousands. Besides, and what is better, these Aryans 
 
 had a most helpful religion based on the truth of 
 2 
 
18 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 monotheism. Their sacred book, the Veda, sup- 
 posed to be the oldest writing in the world, taught 
 the doctrine of one God. 
 
 (b) Other families of this original civilization 
 migrated to Persia, whose fame at the birth of the 
 Savior was equal to that of India. Parseeism, es- 
 tablished by Zoroaster, was built on the central and 
 fundamental truth of the absolute unity of God. 
 Dualism was an after thought of his disciples and 
 formed no part of Zoroaster’s theology. The Zend- 
 Avesta, the original Bible of Parseeism, maintained 
 the doctrine of monotheism. It was, perhaps, these 
 monotheistic believers who went to Jerusalem to 
 pay homage to the ‘“‘New-born King.” Be this as it 
 may, it was, doubtless, these men of God, who two 
 thousand years ago, mapped the skies, gave us the 
 constellations substantially as we have them now, and 
 thus laid the foundation of our modern system of 
 astronomy. 
 
 (c) Later on, some of this original stock of 
 Aryans moved into the little country of Hellas, and 
 organized a most marvelous civilization. At the 
 time our Lord commissioned His apostles to ‘‘go 
 into all the world,” this diminutive land of Greece 
 had become ‘‘celebrated in the history of freedom, 
 of literature, of art, of philosophy, and of civiliza- 
 tion.” Greece reached the apex of her unprec- 
 edented glory under the sanctifying influence of the 
 doctrine of one God and immortality, as first taught 
 by the Aryans and afterward emphasized by such 
 grand characters as Socrates, Plato, and the whole 
 school of Platonic philosophy. 
 
THE LORD’S COMMISSION. 19 
 
 Socrates was condemned by a jury of his country- 
 men to drink the hemlock, because he laughed at 
 their tutelary gods and sneered at their superstitious 
 idolatry. While the common people were given to 
 idolatry, the worship of many gods, nevertheless, 
 the grand men who gave Greece a name and a his- 
 tory that will go down through the ages, were men 
 who believed in God and in the immortality of the 
 soul. These are the basic truths that have lain at 
 the foundation of all the civilizations that ever have 
 been or ever will be. 
 
 When we remember that Macedonia and all the 
 ‘regions round about,” had caught the inspiration 
 of the Platonic philosophy, founded on the truth of 
 one God and the soul’s immortality, we can readily 
 see how they could so appreciate the sweet story of 
 the cross as to send word to the preacher, ‘‘Come 
 over and help us.”” Nor are we surprised that the 
 city of Thessalonica was prepared to appreciate the 
 angelic message, ‘‘On earth peace, good-will to 
 men.” They were in touch with monotheism. 
 
 (d) At the birth of Jesus, Egypt, the mother of 
 science, was yet in her glory. While it is a matter 
 of historic dispute as to whether or not this famous 
 country of the Nile was built up by the Aryans of 
 central Asia, all are agreed that this almost match- 
 less civilization was founded on the doctrine of pure 
 monotheism, and the endless life of man. This fact 
 is abundantly proved from the ‘‘Book of the dead,’’ 
 found buried in the mummy-caskets. All this mum- 
 mification, together with the sacred book of the dead, 
 gave expression of their faith in a life to come. 
 
20 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 (ec) The monotheistic civilization of India in the 
 fulness of time, was carried into China, and was the 
 inspiration that built up the ‘‘Celestial Empire.” 
 The story of China’s intellectual, moral and religious 
 greatness at the time the commission was given, ‘‘Go 
 ye into all the world,” and its better fitness then to 
 comprehend the lofty truth, ‘(God is love,” and its 
 utterly unfit condition now, is reserved for another 
 section. 
 
 (f) ‘Still other divisions of this great army of 
 Aryans left central Asia and migrated into southern 
 Europe. Of all the trees taken from the original 
 nursery of Asia, none withstood the cyclone of igno- 
 rance, superstition and idolatry, save the one planted 
 in the soil of southern Europe. To see that the 
 other nations of the world are not so well-prepared 
 for the proclamation of the gospel as they were two 
 thousand years ago, behold India, Persia, Egypt, 
 Greece and China, all gone back and now plunged 
 into the depths of semi-barbarism. All sitting in 
 the dark and gloomy shadow of a glorious past, 
 waiting to be touched into an intelligence that will 
 prepare them to appreciate the final and sublime 
 message, ‘‘God is love.” 
 
 (In connection with the foregoing statements there 
 are two great historic facts eminently worth knowing, 
 namely: First, all the great civilizations to which 
 reference has been had, were founded by the Aryan 
 or white race. None are in dispute save that of 
 Egypt. Second, all were built on the basic truth of 
 one God and the immortality of the soul. In proof 
 of this the reader need only consult such authors as 
 
THE LORD'S COMMISSION. 21 
 
 Max Mueller, James Legge, and Dr. Frank F. 
 Ellinwood, Secretary of the Board of Foreign Mis- 
 sions of the Presbyterian Church.) 
 
 It is a divinely significant fact that two thousand 
 years ago the leading men of those old civilizations 
 were proclaiming the sublime doctrine of one God 
 and the life everlasting. To the unbiased reader of 
 history it is obviously manifest, that Brahmanism, 
 Hindooism, Buddhism, and Parseeism, under the 
 leadership of such divinely appointed characters as 
 Brahma, Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster, had been 
 stepping-stones to the final religion of love and unity, 
 and under God, had prepared the world for the com- 
 ing of him who was the fulfillment of all prophecy, 
 the end of all revelation. The fulness of time had 
 come for the proclamation, ‘‘Go ye into all the world 
 and preach the gospel.” 
 
 Second. While the nations of earth, as we have 
 seen, were far better prepared to understand and 
 appreciate the gospel two thousand years ago, than 
 they are now, nevertheless the Master gave His dis- 
 ciples specific instruction as to their personal quali- 
 fications and methods. He instructed them to be 
 united, and plainly told them where to begin, where 
 to go and especially where oz to stay. 
 
 (1) They were required to remain in Jerusalem 
 until they were of ‘‘one accord” and all baptized by 
 the one sweet spirit of love. They were ot com- 
 missioned to ‘‘go into all the world,” with a divided 
 theology, and thus build up a divided church! 
 
 Had half of those twelve been Catholics, going to 
 tell the ignorant and unsaved that they were the 
 
22 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 only true vicegerents of Christ and that all others 
 were heretics, while the other half were Protestants 
 feeling themselves divinely commissioned to pro- 
 claim Catholicism as fundamentally false,—with a 
 spirit so diametrically opposed to that of the Savior 
 of all men, think you that our divine Lord would 
 have said, ‘‘Go ye into all the world and preach the 
 gospel?” Doubtless, He would have said, ‘‘Tarry 
 until ye are of one mind and one spirit.” 
 
 It must be perfectly obvious to every unbiased 
 thinker that our Lord’s commission applies either to 
 the Catholics or the Protestants, or to neither. Cer- 
 tainly no one will claim that it is applicable to both. 
 While our Catholic brethren are self-assured that the 
 commission belongs to them, the Protestants are 
 equally dogmatic in the belief that the command is 
 applicable only to them. Viewing the situation from 
 the divine standpoint, is it not altogether more reason- 
 able to conclude that the commission has not the 
 slightest reference to either? Furthermore, had one 
 of these twelve been a Calvinist going to tell the hea- 
 then that a part of them was ordained from the 
 foundation of the world to go to heaven, while the 
 other part had been doomed by an unalterable fate 
 to perdition; and had still another been an Arminian 
 Universalist, purposing to preach that a// would be 
 saved however black their character; and still further, 
 had one been a Disciple going to preach baptism by 
 immersion as a saving ordinance, another a Methodist 
 purposing to preach baptism by sprinkling as non- 
 essential, and still another, a Quaker who was going 
 to tell them that baptism by water is all a heresy, 
 
THE LORD’S COMMISSION. 23 
 
 doubtless in view of such division, our loving Lord 
 would have said, ‘‘Tarry until you are all of one 
 accord.” 
 
 We solemnly aver that the modern church with its 
 antagonistic creeds, uncharitable criticisms, and lack 
 of fellowship for all who ‘ove righteousness and 
 hate iniquity,” if tried by the exalted standard of 
 qualification, as set up by the blessed Christ, would 
 come far short of the divine ideal. 
 
 This wrangling over trinity, depravity, election, 
 
 reprobation, free grace, baptism, this way, that way, 
 and no way, has done more to cripple the efforts of 
 our missionaries, especially among the intelligent 
 Japanese, than any other one cause. Had all our 
 missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, who have gone 
 into the Japanese field, been of ove accord, and filled 
 with the winning spirit of love, and then with kindly 
 speech, beautiful life, and loving sympathy, had pro- 
 claimed the one supreme and matchless truth, ‘‘God 
 is love,” as the saving truth, long ere this the better 
 class of Japanese had repeated the testimony of the 
 loving disciple, ‘‘We love God because he first loved 
 us.””’ 
 From the foregoing it is certainly plain that if 
 China were as thoroughly prepared for the preaching 
 of the gospel now as was Jerusalem then, the church, 
 in its present divided condition, is not up to the di- 
 vine standard of qualification. It must first come 
 together, be of ‘‘one accord,” and thus be in condi- 
 tion to be immersed by the sweet spirit of a universal 
 charity, or else stay at home, and not go abroad to 
 publish its own shameful divisions. 
 
24 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 (2) The Savior not only required His disciples to 
 go in ‘“‘the unity of the spirit,” but also specifically 
 directed them in their journey. 
 
 (a) As the Jews at that time stood for the high- 
 est civilization known to the race, the disciples were 
 required to confine their preaching within the circle 
 of the Jews. He said, ‘‘Go not in the way of the 
 Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans enter 
 ye not.” While our Lord looked away down 
 through the ages when the gospel would be preached 
 to all nations, yet he bade His disciples remain among 
 the monotheistic Jews, and to ‘‘Go not into the way 
 of the (polytheistic) Gentiles.’’. From this it would 
 seem that intelligence must pioneer the gospel, and 
 that we are prohibited from going among idolatrous 
 people. 
 
 (b) They were told not only where to go but also 
 how to go. ‘Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor 
 brass in your purses; nor script for your journey.” 
 This clearly shows that there must be such a hearty 
 welcome on the part of the people, that they will 
 gladly make a free-will offering sufficient to pay all 
 expenses. If there be no such ‘‘open door,” they 
 were necessarily forbidden to go. As China has 
 given no such ‘‘hearty welcome,’”’ our missionaries 
 must needs violate the command, ‘‘Provide neither 
 gold, nor silver.” Alas! alas! they have spent 
 millions of money and now have precious little to 
 show for it, as we shall see. 
 
 (c) They were not to preach even in any city of 
 the Jews, unless they were made welcome. To 
 further prove that the loving Master had no thought 
 
THE LORD’S COMMISSION. 25 
 
 of forcing His gospel on unwilling hearts, and having 
 His disciples go where they were not wanted, He 
 instructed them to watch and if they made a mistake 
 and found themselves ina city where they were not 
 welcome, they were to salute the people kindly and 
 then ‘‘shake off the dust of their feet,’’ and leave 
 ‘‘that house or city.’”’ We submit if in this divine 
 commission to ‘‘go into all the world” there is the 
 slightest intimation that the disciples were to preach 
 the gospel fer force, and without a hearty welcome? 
 The very nature of the Christ religion of ‘‘peace and 
 good-will” absolutely forbids /orvce, and implies a 
 hearty welcome, an open door, and the promise of a 
 ripe harvest. one of these conditions exist in China. 
 
 John and Paul felt themselves divinely commis- 
 sioned to go into Asia because those people at that 
 time were prepared to hear and comprehend the ex- 
 alted truths of the gospel. The grand success that 
 attended their efforts proves that there was a large 
 element there ready to receive them with open arms, 
 and that the harvest was fully ready for the sickle. 
 No such results have attended the missionary efforts 
 in China. It is a sickening failure. 
 
 Besides, (and what is in exact keeping with the 
 Savior’s instruction to His disciples, when He said to 
 them, ‘‘Go into all the world,”) He chose a word 
 which implied preparation and fitness. He did not 
 use the Greek word (I'm) Ge, the meaning of which 
 is land or earth. Nor yet did he choose the word 
 (Ocxoupevn) Otkoumene, which signifies inhabited earth 
 or land, but He employed the Greek term (Koopos) 
 Kosmos, the signification of which was, and is, 
 
26 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 harmony or order. The commission, therefore, was, 
 ‘Go ye into all the (orderly) world.” Our loving 
 Lord had no thought of sending His disciples out 
 among cannibals and savages to preach the gospel, 
 which would be to ‘‘cast pearls before swine,’ and 
 which would ‘‘turn again and rend’’ them. That is 
 precisely what has been done in China on the largest 
 scale the world ever saw. . 
 
 It is true that even in the ‘‘orderly world,” the 
 disciples would find a vicious element which would 
 endanger their lives. It always has been so and is 
 so now, anywhere and everywhere. Hence, the 
 warning, ‘‘Behold, I send you forth as lambs among 
 wolves.” Thus it is seen that every line of argu- 
 ment converges toward God’s fixed and unalterable 
 law of preparation, and he who violates it must abide 
 the consequences. 
 
CHINA, PAST AND PRESENT. 27 
 
 SECTION (IV) 
 
 China, Past and Present. 
 
 The Chinese Empire, under Buddhism, was nearly 
 one thousand years going up, and for the last fifteen 
 hundred years it has been steadily going down, 
 notably during the nineteenth century. 
 
 (1) Twenty-two hundred years ago the people of 
 China built the famous ‘‘Chinese wall,” thirteen hun- 
 dred miles long, twenty feet high, and twenty feet 
 thick. It stands today as one of the seven wonders 
 of the world. In the days of her glory she con- 
 structed a canal the like of which the world has never 
 seen. Her scholars discovered many useful arts such as 
 that of making gunpowder, of printing, of making fine 
 silks, satins, pottery, etc. Six hundred years before 
 Christ, Buddha, or Gautama, who claimed to be an 
 Aryan of the Aryans, preached the doctrine of one 
 God. He used the word Shangte, or Te, as we use 
 the term God. Nor does history present a more 
 devout worshiper. He taught not only the doctrine 
 of pure monotheism, but he made his disciples be- 
 lieve that all worthy souls would at death be re- 
 sumed by this one God who is the soul of the uni- 
 verse, or as Max Mueller says, be ‘‘blown out,”’ or 
 their individuality be lost in the one infinite soul. 
 
28 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 Buddha, under God, not only built up a peace- 
 loving and beautiful religion, but by word and deed 
 he taught a system of ethics that challenges the ad- 
 miration of mankind. Two thousand six hundred 
 years ago this man of the ages catalogued the moral 
 precepts, ‘‘ Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal ; 
 thou shalt not speak untruth; thou shalt not taste 
 intoxicating drinks; thou shalt not do to others as 
 you would not have others do to you.” 
 
 Buddha taught the doctrine of non-resistance, of 
 longsuffering, forgiveness of injuries, of universal 
 peace and good-will to men. He called to his serv- 
 ice sixty disciples and commissioned them to go in 
 different directions and teach all peoples what they 
 had seen and heard of him. As quoted by Dr. 
 Grant, his commission was, ‘‘Go ye now and turn 
 the wheel of the excellent law, set rolling the royal 
 chariot wheel of a universal empire of truth and 
 righteousness. ’’ 
 
 (2) Alas! alas! the foundation stones of the 
 once illustrious Chinese Empire have been removed, 
 and hence her magnificent temple of long ago has 
 fallen; and it is the exalted mission of Christian civ- 
 ilization to have her people ‘‘repent and do their 
 first works,’’ and thus prepare them for the lofty 
 truths of the gospel. That vast empire of over four 
 hundred million souls, as everybody knows, is now 
 given to polytheism and idolatry. The minds of 
 those poor, degraded people are so completely filled 
 with silly rubbish, that it is utterly impossible for 
 them at all to comprehend the stupendous truth of 
 God as Father, and thus be able to love Him. All 
 
CHINA, PAST AND PRESENT. 29 
 
 this accumulated trash must first be entirely eliminated 
 by intellectual enlightenment. Christianity makes 
 little progress when compelled to deal with ignorance, 
 none at all while the mind is filled with the worship 
 of idols. This is philosophy. 
 
 Asa rule, home missionaries carefully observe this 
 law of preparation and cheerful welcome. No one 
 but a crank would go down street and, finding a 
 crowd of hoodlums, would mount a box and begin to 
 preach the gospel. Here at home we have no hesi- 
 tancy in saying that the minister who would stop to 
 preach to such a crowd is grossly violating the divine 
 command, ‘‘Cast not your pearls before swine.”’ But 
 that street crowd of hoodlums in their lack of prepar- 
 ation and sympathy for the gospel, is quite analogous 
 to the condition of the people of China. Only a few 
 weeks ago the writer heard Elder Hayner, who had 
 been a missionary to China for the last seven years, 
 give his experience before a Chinese congregation. 
 He said, ‘‘Looking over my large congregation, I 
 observed that all were smoking. You must allow 
 them to smoke or else they will leave. So, while 
 they soaked me with their smoke I soaked them with 
 the gospel.” The recital of this story filled us with 
 apprehensions that the ‘‘soaking,’’ pro and con, was 
 about equally absurd and grotesque. He went on to 
 say, ‘‘Not unfrequently some one in the large com- 
 pany would cry out, ‘foreign devil,’ and I would 
 reply, ‘What about the local devil?’’ Meantime 
 another would yell, ‘‘Kill him, kill him.” 
 
 But some one will say, ‘‘That is only the old cry, 
 ‘Crucify him, crucify him.’”’ But I submit if there 
 
30 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 is any analogy between the apostolic method of car- 
 rying on missionary work, and that adopted by our 
 missionaries in China? (a) The people to whom 
 the early disciples preached as a body were prepared 
 to appreciate the gospel, as was evinced in the 
 abundant fruit of their labor. No such preparation, 
 and therefore no such results, have attended the mis- 
 sionaries in China. (b) Learning that popular senti- 
 ment was against them, and that, therefore, they 
 were not welcome, the apostles doubtless obeyed the 
 injunction, ‘‘Go your way.’’ On the other hand the 
 missionaries in China propose to ‘‘stand by their 
 guns,’’ and ask their governments to assist them in 
 administering cold lead to some, so that they may 
 deal out the loving gospel to other some. (c) If, 
 however, the apostles found themselves in the wrong 
 place, and failed to make their escape, and were, 
 therefore, apprehended and condemned to death, 
 they made no physical resistance, but went willingly 
 to the stake. While they simply took their lives in 
 their own hands, asking no protection, our modern 
 missionaries put to stake the lives of others by asking 
 protection from the government. To stake your 
 own life is one thing, to jeopardize the life of your 
 brother is quite another. 
 
 But for our habit of thinking and doing, I would 
 provoke no controversy by making the following 
 averments: (a) During the first three hundred years 
 of gospel simplicity, the Christ religion of peace, 
 love and good-will, made for the glory of God and 
 the elevation of the race as it has never done since. 
 (b) During those years of love, non-resistance, and 
 
CHINA, PAST AND PRESENT. 31 
 
 unparalleled prosperity, the ov/y implement of war- 
 fare used by the church, whether for aggressive or 
 defensive work, was the ‘‘Sword of the Spirit.” (c) 
 Since the middle of the fourth century until now, 
 the methods of propagating the gospel have been 
 materially changed by largely substituting the sword 
 of the flesh for the ‘‘ Sword of the Spirit ;’’ and hence 
 came the ‘‘Dark Ages,” the mortifying human 
 divisions, and the disgraceful scenes and cruel war 
 that have been going on in China during the last 
 twelve months by nations professing themselves to 
 be Christians ! 
 
 (d) The supreme need of the age is, that the 
 Christian world become Christianized, by returning to 
 the loving example of the early Christians, who, 
 when ‘‘reviled, reviled not again.’’ The Christ spirit 
 of love should be divorced from the world spirit of 
 war. Nothing but a return to the religion of uni- 
 versal love, which ‘‘worketh no evil,’ will usher in 
 the age of gospel light, liberty and peace, bury 
 human divisions in a hopeless grave, bring the long 
 predicted happy day when Christian nations shall 
 ‘‘beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into 
 pruning hooks ;. nation shall not lift up sword against 
 nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” 
 ‘‘How long, O Lord, holy and true,’ until the 
 Christian world shall learn that the Christ spirit is 
 non-resistant ? 
 
32 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 (SECTION V) 
 Mental Condition of China. 
 
 We may assume on the ground of universal con- 
 sent, that the mind of the Mongolian in its habit of 
 thought, is fundamentally different from that of the 
 Anglo-Saxon. The latter has always believed in the 
 unity of the universe and the consequent unity of 
 its Creator; while the former has been trained for 
 more than a thousand years to believe that nature 
 is one vast system of antagonisms, and must, there- 
 fore, have creators ad infinitum, some of whom are 
 bad, while others are good. For more than a thou- 
 sand years these yellow skinned brethren have been 
 worshiping these imps of the imagination, until a 
 superstitious falsehood and a degrading idolatry have 
 been interwoven into every fibre of their mental 
 being. It seems like folly zzéensified to go to those 
 poor, deluded people, with the lofty truths of mono- 
 theism and Christian civilization, while their minds 
 are brimful of the degrading falsehoods of polytheism. 
 The unmixed falsehood of their long-continued habit 
 of thought has so differentiated them from the sub- 
 lime thought of our religion, that the elimination of 
 this accumulated rubbish zs a psychological necessity. 
 Just as long as the Chinese mind believes in ‘gods 
 
MENTAL CONDITION OF CHINA. 33 
 
 many and lords many,” just so long, if it accept 
 Christ at all, it will accept Him as just one more god 
 added to the number already c:talogued. 
 
 At this point we raise a psychological question, 
 the solution of which will solve the problem of method. 
 Assuming that the human soul is composed of vari- 
 ous faculties which differentiate in their office, we 
 inquire, What particular part of the mind is divinely 
 charged with the duty of eliminating falsehood and 
 acquiring truthe Mental philosophy founded upon 
 conscious experience, gives unmistakable answer to 
 this important question. Without stopping to specu- 
 late with the theological theories of men, if only you 
 will turn your thought in upon your own conscious 
 experience, you will readily learn that it is not your 
 social faculty, moral faculty, nor yet your religious 
 faculty, not one of these or all put together, that 
 deal with questions of evidence, touching truth or 
 falsehood, but you know by your own conscious ex- 
 perience that it is your thinking faculty that examines 
 testimony and thus eliminates falsehood, and thus, 
 too, prepares for the introduction of truth. It is the 
 identical faculty that follows the footprints of science, 
 You are perfectly conscious of the fact that it is in- 
 tellectual enlightment that drives darkness from 
 the mind. Nothing else can. 
 
 It is the intellectual man and not the religious 
 man that reasons on the questions of relation between 
 cause and effect, between error and truth.- To at- 
 tempt by the introduction of religion to drive from 
 the Chinese mind the spiritual darkness which has 
 
 been gathering for a thousand years, is like attempt 
 3 
 
34 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 ' 
 ing to drive darkness from a room by the introduc- 
 tion of a cudgel. What our Chinese brethren need 
 is not more religion but more sense. 
 
 In the light of psychology it ts safe to say that man’s 
 intellectual nature ts divinely appointed to the task of 
 leading out on all lines of art, agriculture, commerce, 
 philosophy, good morals or loving religion. Whenever 
 reason, or the intellectual faculty, God-appointed to 
 the discovery of truth, is thrust to the background, 
 that moment the soul is at sea with an immense deal 
 of sail, but without ballast, rudder or compass, and 
 ready to be dashed upon the desolate coast of igno- 
 rance and superstition. 
 
 Having a tinker, man’s first privilege and highest 
 duty is to think the thought of a free man along all 
 lines, not only of art, science and good morals, but 
 of religion as well. If, however, he finds. that in the 
 providential distribution of this noble faculty, he was 
 left without a ‘‘thinker,” he should be excused for 
 thinking and doing as others have thought and done 
 for the last one hundred years. Religion, when 
 pioneered by sense and reason, is the most beautiful 
 thing the world ever saw, but when destitute of com- 
 mon intelligence it becomes the most ghastly and 
 cruel monster that ever cursed humanity. The good 
 Lord deliver us from religious bigotry! Ignorance is 
 the legitimate progenitor of all the thumb-screw 
 theology that ever cursed the race or dishonored God. 
 Sanctified intelligence is the demand of the hour. 
 
 What the Chinese people need and must have be- 
 fore they can comprehend and appreciate the match- 
 less truths of the gospel, is zwtellectual enlightenment 
 
MENTAL CONDITION OF CHINA. 35 
 
 by which they may discover the stupid folly of 
 polytheism and _ idolatry. Professor Legge of 
 Oxford says, ‘‘Five thousand years ago the Chinese 
 were monotheists.” Then they believed in one su- 
 preme God, and worshiped him, but now they have 
 over one million gods, and worship frogs, snakes, 
 crocodiles and every new god introduced. 
 
 But we are told that the pivotal point on which 
 the Christian character hinges is ‘Love to God,” 
 and that love is the product of the heart and not 
 of the head! The duty of the Chinese mission- 
 ary, therefore, is to appeal to the heart! But I sub- 
 mit 27 there be any royal road to the heart except by way 
 of the head! How is the heart to be stirred with 
 emotions of love, only as it discovers that which is 
 lovely? Asa matter of conscious experience every- 
 body knows, that knows anything, that love is a 
 spontaneity! It comes, not at our bidding, nor downs 
 at our saying, but because the intellect has discov- 
 ered and presented to the affections that which is 
 attractive and lovely. Only when the zwtellect has 
 discovered points of loveliness is it possible for the 
 heart to love. This zs the philosophy of expertence. 
 
 As learning to love God is the acquisition of the 
 loftiest truth of the universe, and the supreme duty 
 of man, Christ’s mission, therefore, was to ‘“‘show us 
 the Father.’’ This he did by addressing our intelli- 
 gence with charming and convincing speech, with a 
 beautiful life of omnipotent holiness, and with a win- 
 ning spirit of boundless benevolence, and then saying 
 to his disciples, ‘‘He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father.” The comprehension of such a divine char- 
 
36 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 acter, and therefore, the possibility of loving such a 
 delightful personage, implies the highest, deepest and 
 broadest intellectual thought of which the human 
 mind is capable. To know Him is ‘‘life eternal.”’ 
 
 An intelligent comprehension of God’s Fatherly 
 character, as revealed in Christ, is the one matchless 
 end of all human endeavor, and the one toward which 
 the feet of the ages have been wending their way 
 since the day-dawn of civilization until now. Not 
 wonderful that it required centuries of preparation to 
 get the world ready for the coming of this final mes- 
 sage! It is the one grand central truth of the uni- 
 verse, which is revealed, not only in the infinite per- 
 sonality of Jesus, but it is the immeasurable truth 
 of all natural philosophies. Not wonderful, there- 
 fore, that the world’s largest intelligence has been 
 slow, sluggishly slow to grasp the thought, ‘‘God is 
 love,” which is, nevertheless, central and fundamental 
 to the Christ religion. 
 
 Mental philosophy, as well as observation and ex- 
 perience, teaches us that intelligence must pioneer 
 religion, else religion is only a blind superstition. 
 An idiot may have a heart capable of loving, but 
 having no glimmering of reason by which he may 
 discover that which is lovely, all is darkness and 
 confusion, and he is not responsible for his loves or 
 hates. Only as he rises into intelligence does he rise 
 into moral accountability. This is recognized by the 
 law of the commonwealth as well as that of God. 
 To have more religion, therefore, than sense, is a 
 calamity. And that is just the fatal ailment of the 
 Chinese Empire. 
 
MENTAL CONDITION OF CHINA. 37 
 
 (1.) It may be said that there are many intelli- 
 gent people in China! That is true in a sense, but 
 their education is based on a falsehood! There are 
 few, if any, exceptions to the statement that their 
 learned men are atheists, agnostics, or polytheists. 
 Minister Wu says they are agnostics. All reasoning 
 from such false premises must be fundamentally 
 false. From men occupying such sacrilegious posi- 
 tions, the world of true philosophy never received 
 anything, nor does it expect anything. Besides, the 
 intelligent class are not reached by our missionaries, 
 as we shall see in the next section. 
 
 (2.) But we are told that the missionaries estab- 
 lish theistic schools and colleges! But I submit if 
 preaching the gospel is not frst and paramount, and 
 education an after-thought! The church antedates 
 the schoolhouse—preaching before teaching. They 
 first seek to convert those ignorant people and then 
 undertake so to enlighten their reason as to enable 
 them to comprehend God, and thus be able to love 
 Him. Instead of seeking first to develop and en- 
 lighten the intellect, and thus to make it possible for 
 those ignorant people to see the ‘‘beauty of holi- 
 ness,’”’ and fall in love with ‘‘God manifest in the 
 flesh,” they first tell the beautiful story of the cross, 
 the sublime significance of which the Chinaman can 
 no more comprehend than can a blind man distinguish 
 colors. Besides, the present method of teaching is 
 not to begin by teaching them our language, but the 
 missionary must first spend much precious time in 
 getting a smattering of the Chinese poverty-stricken 
 speech, by which he is handicapped from start to fin- 
 
38 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 ish in his attempt to teach them. The plan adopted 
 during the last one hundred years has gone upon the 
 supposition that they must be taught to love God first, 
 and have sense enough to know who God ts, later on. 
 
 This method of dealing with Chinese ignorance is 
 about as fatal of good results as was the advice of the 
 mother to her son, when she said, ‘‘ My dear boy, you 
 must zot go into the water until you have learned 
 ‘how to swim.’’ In the light of mental science it is to 
 disregard the divine plan by putting religion in ad- 
 vance of intelligence and thus making ‘‘ darkness 
 more visible and confusion worse confounded,”’’ as is 
 the case just now in China. It also reverses the 
 human order by beginning at the wrong end and thus 
 making progress backward. Certainly, in the light 
 of history, Chinese civilization has been going back- 
 ward for ages, notably during the nineteenth century. 
 
 If only we could think freely, and in the absence of 
 preconceived opinion, view the results of our mission- 
 ary work in China for the last one hundred years, 
 which present the picture of only one hundred thou- 
 sand converts out of four hundred million, forty thou- 
 sand of whom have been cruelly butchered during 
 the last twelve months, the other sixty thousand left 
 by the missionaries to the mercy of the mob, the 
 tramp, tramp of armies and a world turned upside- 
 down; if only we could see this awful picture as our 
 heavenly Father sees it, I apprehend that we should 
 deliberately conclude that there is something radically 
 wrong in our methods of trying to save China. 
 
 But we think it all perfectly right, simply because 
 we always thought so, and everybody else thinks so. 
 
MENTAL CONDITION OF CHINA. 39 
 
 But in the sight of God that is no reason at all. | For 
 more than one hundred years all the American peo- 
 ple, except the Quakers, (God bless the Quakers) 
 believed that human slavery was right. It was, nev- 
 ertheless, a gross violation of the divine rights of 
 man, for which this country had to pay dearly in 
 money and blood. I verily believe that in the sight 
 of God the civilized governments of the world are 
 violating the divine rights of the people of China by 
 attempting to force upon them a civilization for which 
 they are not prepared; and by violating this funda- 
 mental law of preparation our missionary work in the 
 Celestial Empire is in a most pitiable plight as every- 
 body knows. For let it not be forgotten that our 
 missionaries are in China, not because they are wel- 
 come guests, but for the reason that they are pro- 
 tected by international law backed by the navies and 
 armies of the civilized world. 
 
 In the light of the sweet, gentle and loving spirit 
 of Jesus, it is certainly manifest that such is not 
 the divine method by which He would have His 
 heavenly message of ‘‘On earth peace, good-will 
 to men” published abroad. ‘‘He that taketh the 
 sword shall die by the sword,” is a prediction now 
 being fulfilled to the letter. 
 
 It may be said that the early Christians suffered 
 martyrdom! That is true, but they did not martyr, 
 nor did they ask to be protected by the sword. — 
 This is the difference between Christianity, per se, 
 and the war spit which is now rife in China. It is 
 the distinction, too, like unto that between light and 
 darkness. In the sight of the Father of us all, I 
 
40 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 believe that the awful slaughter that has been 
 going on in China within the last twelve months, has 
 been a disgrace to the religion of Christ next akin to 
 that of the Spanish Inquisition, and like unto that 
 blood-curdling institution, all is done in the sweet 
 name ofa religion of love. Whata travesty! ! Whata 
 grotesque burlesque on the immaculate Jesus and His 
 religion of universal benevolence! ! 
 
 We excite no curiosity when we say that the cen- 
 tral thought of Mohammedanism is political power, 
 which is to be established at the point of the sword, 
 while the central and fundamental truth of Christian- 
 ity is Jove, which can be propagated only by the 
 “Sword of the Spirit.” I submit if our present 
 method in China is not substantially that of Mo- 
 hammed, which is diametrically opposed to that of 
 Christ. 
 
 Besides, from trustworthy reports, we learn, to our 
 shame, that the Buddhist soldiers of Japan manifested 
 more humanity and common decency than did the 
 Christian soldiers. We will not wonder at this, how- 
 ever, if only we remember the fact that our dealings 
 with China, as Christian (?) nations, have been in 
 direct contravention with the law of preparation, the 
 science of psychology, the teaching of history, and 
 the plain instruction of Him who was the personal 
 incarnation of the Spirit of a boundless love. A 
 ‘comparatively poor religion lived up to, is vastly 
 better than a perfect religion, the central and funda- 
 mental truth of which is grossly violated. 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 41 
 
 (SECTION VI) 
 The Pitiful Outcome. 
 
 Having unwittingly violated the divine law of 
 preparation and unintentionally disregarded the in- 
 struction given by our Lord as to personal quali- 
 fication, the importance of the unity of the spirit, 
 where to go, and especially where ot to stay, we 
 need not be surprised at the pitiful outcome. Let 
 the reader seek to see the awful situation as our 
 loving Savior must see it. 
 
 Nineteen hundred years have come and gone since 
 the ‘‘great multitude” of angels filled the night 
 breeze of the plains of Judea with the heavenly 
 shout, ‘‘Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, 
 good-will to men,” and now at the close of all these 
 centuries of blood and carnage the Christian (?) 
 nations of earth are in arms, with cruel implements 
 of war, blood and death, the like of which the world 
 had never seen, watching each other with jealous eye, 
 lest the grab spirit of the one or the other shall 
 obtain more than its share in the ‘‘sphere of influ- 
 ence,’’ which seeks to disintegrate that once peaceful 
 Chinese Empire! and all, too, in the precious name 
 of the immaculate ‘‘ Prince of Peace.” It is beyond 
 human conception even to imagine a more colossal 
 burlesque on a religion of love and good-will. 
 
42 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 As China was utterly unprepared to comprehend 
 the exalted truths of the gospel, and the church di- 
 vided as to what the truths of the gospel are, it 
 ought not to be surprising that our missionary work 
 among the Celestials has resulted in a stupendous 
 failure! One hundred years of honest but mis- 
 directed toil and sacrifice; millions of money ex- 
 pended; hundreds of honest missionaries massacred 
 with indiscriminate violence ; unnumbered thousands 
 of ignorant but innocent converts butchered by a 
 heathenish mob; sixty thousand other converts de- 
 serted by the missionaries and left to the mercy of 
 enraged fanaticism; all the civilized nations in arms 
 and a distracted world; all this vast, pitiful, and in- 
 describable desolation with absolutely worse than 
 nothing of good to show for it. By which we mean 
 that China is in a worse condition to-day than she was 
 a century ago. 
 
 (1) But we are gravely told that during the last 
 century the Protestant missionaries have been in- 
 fluential in converting one hundred thousand to the 
 Christian faith! With the view of learning the exact 
 import of this statement, the man of thought and 
 moderation, entirely free from sectism, and at liberty 
 to think, proceeds to analyze: 
 
 (a) He finds that one hundred thousand out of 
 four hundred million gives only one convert to every 
 four thousand. Besides, if they are no better than 
 American converts at the end of six months they 
 must be divided by at least two, thus leaving only 
 one out of eight thousand! 
 
 (b) He learns that as a rule the converts belong 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 43 
 
 to the poorest and most uninfluential class of society! 
 Fhe writer had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Mark 
 Williams, who has spent thirty-four years in mission- 
 ary work in China. In answer to the question, 
 ‘‘What class of Chinese society is most likely to be- 
 come converted?’ he replied, ‘‘The unfortunate, 
 opium eaters, and the illiterate!” ‘“Do you reach the 
 more intelligent and better class of society?’ He 
 answered, ‘‘Not as a rule, only as we employ them 
 to teach in our schools!” 
 
 (c) This inquirer after truth discovers that the 
 converts are no better after conversion than they 
 were before. Touching this point, we asked Prof. 
 Williams the question, ‘‘Are the converts treacherous?” 
 He answered, ‘‘We always accept them with a 
 sanctified suspicion! ‘We have,’ he said, ‘‘Pick- 
 ers, charged with the duty of picking out those who 
 we have reason to believe will stand.”’ 
 
 This answer given by one who had been a faithful 
 missionary in the very heart of China for thirty-four 
 years, lets in a flood of light on the dark situation. 
 It is worth more than many books or a long list of 
 flaming missionary reports. We see clearly that 
 these fifty or one hundred thousand converts, are, as 
 a rule, utterly unreliable, and therefore an absolute 
 injury to any good cause. Not wonderful that the 
 intelligent are shut out. Even in this country, if a 
 minister goes to a city to found a church and all his 
 first converts belong to the lowest element of society, 
 and he must needs receive them ‘‘weth a sanctified 
 suspicion,” his enterprise is doomed. Asa matter of 
 fact, the great heart of China’s four hundred million 
 
44 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 has not been touched by the conversion of a few of 
 its most ignorant and corrupt people. 
 
 Besides, this treachery on the part of converts, 
 which has been the sad experience of all missionaries, 
 is based on the fact that their ignorance makes it 
 psychologically impossible for them to comprehend 
 the basic truths of the gospel. A noble and reliable 
 Christian szaxhood must be built on the foundation of 
 intelligence, and a belief in one God, the very things 
 of which they are utterly destitute. Even in this 
 country of monotheism, if Christianity be introduced 
 among a very ignorant people, such as the colored 
 race of the extreme South, it has but little influence 
 by way of making them stable and reliable, but mani- 
 fests itself mainly in superstition, ritualism, external 
 demonstrations, and under the influence of such 
 ignorance grows more and more grotesque. As 
 everybody knows this, the great method has been 
 and is now, to educate the blacks of the South and 
 thus pioneer a religion of intelligence, honesty, and 
 of noble manhood. 
 
 In further proof of the correctness of this line of 
 thought, I quote from Henry Thomas Buckle, who 
 has written two large volumes on ‘Civilization in Eng- 
 land.” In second volume, page 184, he says, ‘“‘We 
 may as well expect that the seed should quicken in 
 the barren rock, as that a mild and philosophical re- 
 ligion should be established among ignorant savages. 
 Of this, innumerable experiments have been made, 
 and always with the same result. | Men of excellent 
 intentions and full of a fervent, though mistaken zeal, 
 have been, and still are, attempting to propagate their 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 45 
 
 own religion among the inhabitants of barbarous 
 countries. By strenuous and unremitting activity, 
 they have in many cases persuaded savage com- 
 munities to make a profession of the Christian re- 
 ligion. But whoever will. compare the triumphant 
 reports of missionaries with the long chain of evi- 
 dence supplied by competent travelers, will soon find 
 that such profession is only nominal, and that these 
 ignorant tribes have adopted the ceremonies of the 
 new religion, but have by no means adopted the re- 
 ligion itself. They may be baptized; they may take 
 the sacrament; they may flock to the church! All this 
 they may do and yet be as far removed from the 
 spirit of Christianity as when they bowed the knee 
 before their former idols. The rites and forms of a 
 religion lie on the surface; they are at once seen; 
 they are quickly learned by those who are unable to 
 penetrate to that which lies beneath. It is the deep- 
 er and zward change which alone is durable; and 
 this the savage can never experience while he is sunk 
 in ignorance. After a careful study of the condition 
 of barbarous nations, we do most confidently assert, 
 that there is no well-attested case of any people 
 being permanently converted to Christianity, except 
 in those very few instances where missionaries, being 
 men of knowledge as well as piety, have familiarized 
 the savage with habits of thought, and by thus stimu- 
 lating his intellect have prepared him for the re- 
 ception of those religious principles, which, without 
 such stimulus, he could never have understood.”’ 
 Here we have the accumulated wisdom of a care- 
 ful historian bearing testimony to the fact that intel- 
 
46 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 ligence must pioneer Christianity, else Christianity, 
 of necessity, will utterly fail to accomplish the sub- 
 lime end of its divine appointment. Unlike any 
 other religion known to the race, Christianity was or- 
 dained of God to follow the lead of the highest intel- 
 lectual enlightenment and the common sense of the 
 common people who believe in God. And any 
 human effort at putting such religion in the lead of 
 ignorance, is to reverse the divine order, and must 
 result in disaster. The entire trend of history proves 
 the truth of this remark. ; 
 
 England, for example, has had control over all 
 India for one hundred and forty three years. She 
 entered upon the stupendous task of Christianizing 
 that once famous Empire. It is true, her ninety 
 thousand bayonets have put a stop to Thugism, and 
 many outlandish practices of that ignorant and super- 
 stitious people; and while a few of the ‘‘baser sort” 
 have been converted, yet the great moral and reli- 
 gious heart of that over three hundred million of semi- 
 barbarians, has not been touched by a system of reli- 
 gious truth which they utterly fail to comprehend. 
 The same is true of all the provinces of the British. 
 Empire, save those whose intelligence, like that of 
 Canada, could grasp the matchless thought of God as 
 universal Father, man as universal brother. 
 
 If there were such a thing as ‘‘convincing one 
 against his will,” which is hardly possible, touching 
 the absolute necessity of sending the Christian school- 
 teacher first and the gospel minister later on, cer- 
 tainly such a one would be convinced if only he 
 would cut off previous vision, and behold, with 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 47 
 
 steady gaze the panoramic picture of awful desolation 
 which is now passing in review before God, angels 
 and men, among our once peaceful brethren of the 
 Celestial Empire, all because of human mistakes. 
 
 When a semi-barbarous people have a religion 
 suited to their ignorance, it is not only a gross in- 
 justice ‘to thrust upon them a religion infinitely 
 beyond their comprehension, but it works 722 upon 
 the religion itself. For example, when Christianity 
 was first introduced into Europe, which was then 
 inhabited by Romans and foreigners, all of whom 
 were ignorant, superstitious and idolatrous, it soon 
 spread over nearly the entire country. But in the 
 light of ecclesiastical history it may be safely said, 
 that Christianity not only failed to be of any benefit 
 to the people, but itself was dragged down to the 
 level of stupid ignorance. Buckle says, ‘‘It was in 
 vain that Christianity taught a simple doctrine, and 
 enjoined a simple worship. The new religion was 
 corrupted by the old follies. The adoration of zdols 
 was succeeded by the adoration of saints; the wor- 
 ship of the Vzvgin was substituted for the worship of 
 Cybele, (the mother of gods.) Pagan ceremonies 
 were established in Christian churches; not only the 
 mummeries of idolatry, but its doctrines, were quickly 
 added, and were incorporated and worked into the 
 new religion, until, after the lapse of a few genera- 
 tions, Christianity exhibited such an outlandish and 
 hideous form, that its best features were lost, and the 
 lineaments of its earlier loveliness altogether de- 
 stroyed.” Hence, came the ‘‘Dark Ages.”’ 
 
 The ‘‘zeal without knowledge,” which attempted 
 
48 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 to build up Christian civilization in Europe on the 
 foundation of polytheism, idolatry and ignorant super- 
 stition, resulted in a most stupendous failure.  Chris- 
 tianity with its lofty truths of love and righteousness, 
 was so dragged down to the level of barbarism, that 
 itself became one of the most cruel things that ever 
 dishonored God or cursed humanity. Its doctrines 
 and its precepts, as taught by the priesthood, be- 
 came so God-dishonoring and soul-destroying, that in 
 the providence of God, as it would seem, Moham- 
 medanism was called to the task of well-nigh sweeping 
 /duch Cristianity out of Europe. 
 
 -! Chambers’ Encyclopedia says: ‘‘Broadly speaking, 
 the Mohammedans may be said to have been the 
 enlightened teachers of barbarous Europe from the 
 gth to the 13th century.” But for Mohammed, who, 
 with a burning enthusiasm, cried, ‘‘There is no god 
 but God,” it would seem that the corruption of the 
 church would have robbed Christianity of the doc- 
 trine of monotheism, and the moral and religious 
 wreck and ruin of the ‘‘Dark Ages” would have 
 swept the last vestige of intelligence from the 
 country. Disregarding God’s law of preparation and 
 rushing, in among those ignorant hordes of barba- 
 rians, instead of Christianizing Europe, Christianity 
 
 itself became paganized. 
 
 In the light of history, therefore, as well as that of 
 mental philosophy, it would be safe to predict that 
 if China’s four hundred million of polytheistic tdolaters 
 were all converted to Christianity in a day, it would 
 only result in dragging Christianity down to the level 
 
 ie their ignorant superstition. It would be an -un 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 49 
 
 tellable calamity to the religion of love. Philo- 
 sophical necessity imperatively requires that we first 
 drive out the darkness of polytheism, which has been 
 accumulating for more than a thousand years, by 
 intellectual enlightment, and thus prepare the way 
 for the coming of monotheism, and of righteousness, 
 founded upon the matchless law of love, which from 
 every standpoint of human’ thinking, challenges the 
 highest, deepest and broadest thought of which the 
 human mind is capable. 
 
 To make good the proposition that the missionary 
 work in China, during the last one hundred years, has 
 resulted in worse than a failure, let us examine the 
 fruits of that faithful but misdirected labor a little 
 further. From the most reliable accounts, it would 
 seem that of the one hundred thousand converts, 
 about forty thousand have been massacred during the 
 last twelve months, while the other sixty thousand 
 have been deserted by the missionaries, and left to 
 the mercy of an infuriated mob. Professor Williams 
 gave a most thrilling account of the daring adven- 
 tures and narrow escapes he had to save himself from 
 cruel death. When asked, ‘‘What became of the 
 converts you had gathered during the thirty-four 
 years of missionary work?” he replied, ‘I advised 
 them to take care of themselves. Some were massa- , 
 cred, while others, as I learned, escaped to the 
 mountains.”’ What a sad finish! 
 
 It looks hard, but it was the best he could ca 
 For while he was at liberty to flee to America for 
 refuge, he had no sz2gh¢ to bring his converts with 
 him. TZhzs country would not have them. All he ( 
 
 4 
 
50 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 could do, therefore, was to leave the poor, ignorant, 
 helpless souls in the Chinese slaughter-house. 
 
 Forty thousand dead! Sixty thousand denied a 
 refuge from cruel death!! Is this the only product 
 of a hundred years of honest toil? It is marvel- 
 ously manifest that this is only a small part of the 
 heart-sickening picture. Think of the united armies 
 of the civilized world, which for months have been 
 marauding over that once peaceful and comparatively 
 happy country; and from trustworthy reports, loot- 
 ing property, murdering the innocent, assaulting 
 virtue, and committing inhuman outrages at the sight 
 of which none but devils may laugh, while angels 
 must weep and good men hide for very shame. This 
 is the inauguration of the 20th century, all done in 
 the sweet name of cevzlzzation!! What a misnomer ! 
 What a colossal, but unintentional, fraud! ! 
 
 Need we wonder that our peacefully inclined hu- 
 man beings of the Celestial Empire, look upon us as 
 “Foreign Devils?” It is safe to say that they are 
 utterly ignorant of Christianity per se, pure and 
 simple! They see Christianity only from the stand- 
 point of their own bitter experience. Of all the re- 
 ligions of which they have heard, ours must appear 
 to them the most despisable. Nor need we hope 
 that the deep-rooted prejudice which has been 
 formed in the Chinese mind, touching the cruel char- 
 acter of our religion, will be readily removed. If it 
 required a century to convert a few of the more de- 
 graded, certainly it will take more than another one 
 hundred years to undo what we have done for the 
 more intelligent masses. Zo untie the knot that we 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 51 
 
 have tied, and thus solve the mysterious problem of how 
 to restore the confidence they have lost, will be the patient 
 and loving service of centuries to come. As he must of 
 necessity meet the history that is now being written 
 on the Chinese mind, pity, therefore, the missionary 
 who goes to China henceforth ! ! 
 
 (2) But on every hand we are told that the blood 
 of those forty thousand converts, and that of the 
 missionaries, is the blood of martyrs and as such, it is 
 the seed of Christianity. Here again we need care- 
 fully to analyze this common saying. First, what 
 constitutes a martyr? All will agree that a martyr is 
 one who willingly surrenders his life, rather than for- 
 sware his allegiance to his religion! He is one who 
 makes a /fvee choice between surrendering his reli- 
 gious faith or submitting to death. Second, he is 
 mot a martyr, though he be slain while fighting to 
 the bitter end. He is zot a martyr who gets killed 
 while seeking to kill his brother. 
 
 With this conceded definition of the term martyr, 
 it would seem that but little martyr’s blood has been 
 shed in all this lamentable conflict! It has gone 
 upon the principle of ‘‘give and take,” kill or get 
 killed. Prof. Williams said that he and his comrades 
 armed themselves with knives and guns and pro- 
 posed to fight to a finish. Is that the act of a 
 martyr? We may not say that this was not right, 
 nor that under the circumstances we should 
 have done otherwise, but it is clearly manifest 
 that such fighting, pro and con, is the spzrz¢ of the 
 world and has no kinship to the spirit of the martyr. 
 
 Had all those missionaries and their converts been 
 
52 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 put to the /est of renouncing the faith or submitting 
 to death, and without resistance they had decided 
 that rather than betray the loving Christ, they had 
 gone to the rack, the faggot, and to cruel death, in 
 : that event it had been the ‘‘blood of martyrs,” which, 
 as Clement of Alexandria, at the close of the second 
 century, said, ‘‘is the seed of Christianity;’’ but as 
 . no such test, in a general way, was made and no 
 } such sacrifice offered, it seems almost sacrilegious, in 
 such connection, to talk about the blood of martyrs 
 being the seed of Christianity. 
 
 While the world with repentant heart for nearly two 
 thousand years has been thinking of the innocent 
 | suffering of such martyrs as Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 
 Peter, Paul, and thousands of others who offered their 
 
 blood as a willing sacrifice to seal their loving faith, we 
 
 apprehend that the people of the Celestial Empire 
 will think of this blood of foreigners with indignation 
 and wrath. Instead of being the ‘‘seed of Christi- 
 anity,’’ with them it will be the seed of bitter hate 
 for long years to come. 
 
 ii (a) But it is said, as if that was all of it, that the 
 
 i Boxers are responsible for all this outrageous devas- 
 
 ‘tation and bloodshed. It is true that the Boxers 
 touched off the magazine. But the question back of 
 it, and the one most important to answer is, who 
 
 _; constructed the magazine? We are to remember 
 
 ‘/’ that the Chinese Empire had over four hundred mil- 
 lion inhabitants; that this vast number of people had 
 lived in peace among themselves for a thousand 
 ' years; that they tilled the soil and earned their bread 
 as no such united number had ever been known to 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME. 53 
 
 do; they had a religion, the decalogue of which pre- 
 sented a system of morals next equal to that of 
 Moses, and in one respect it went beyond it, in that 
 it emphasized the commandment, ‘‘Thou shalt take 
 no intoxicating drinks;” by the edict of the Em- 
 peror the use of opium was forbidden, and even the 
 poppy tree was not suffered to grow. In the face of 
 all this England, over one hundred years ago, sent 
 Protestant missionaries to Christianize China. Alas! 
 alas!! she sent ship loads of tobacco, opium and 
 rum, to curse the Empire. What an outrage! 
 
 The English Christian (?) merchants sought to con- 
 vince the government that to traffic in these things 
 would be a source of revenue, to which the Em- 
 peror replied, ‘‘God forbid that I should enrich the 
 treasury of my country by the crimes of my people.” 
 What a rebuke to our boasted civilization! To the 
 everlasting disgrace of a professed Christian country 
 be it said, England forced this damnable traffic on 
 China, which for over a hundred years has wrought 
 wreck and ruin for that once peaceful Empire. After 
 
 : 
 
 ( 
 
 - 
 
 thirty-four years of observation, Prof. Williams gives ° 
 it as his opinion that fifty per cent. of the people of | 
 
 China are slaves to the use of opium, and that they 
 are the most wretched beings on earth. The im- 
 measurable outrages perpetrated upon China during 
 the 19th century, by Western civilization, is known 
 only to God! 
 
 In this connection, if we would come to a just con- 
 clusion, we should remember that those Boxers were 
 the ones most devoted to the Buddhist religion. They 
 are the ones that were not influenced by missionary 
 
 ( 
 
 ( 
 
oe 
 
 54 : THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 effort, and therefore, knew absolutely nothing of 
 Christianity per se, pure and simple. For this reason 
 they regarded ali foreigners alike. Some were there 
 to rob them of their money, while others were there 
 to rob them of their religion, and all were there as 
 ‘Foreign Devils.” Being those of most intelligence 
 they could see that foreign trade and foreign influ- 
 ence had wrought the ruin of their country. As 
 from their point of view they were being robbed of 
 all that they held sacred and dear on earth,—and 
 with the view of saving a remnant from the awful 
 wreck and ruin that was going on, they made a last 
 desperate effort to drive the foreigners from, their 
 country. J wonder tf, under the circumstances, we, 
 though more enlightened, would have done differently ! 
 
 It is thus clearly seen that while the Boxers pre- 
 cipitated this disgraceful scene which is passing in 
 review before God, angels and men, yet the real 
 cause of all the trouble in the Orient is found in the 
 unwise and wicked methods of the Occident. Had 
 we recognized the childhood condition of those Celes- 
 tials, and proceeded to ¢each and help those innocent 
 but ignorant people, and thus exhibited the spirit of 
 the true Samaritan, think you that the best people of 
 that Empire had turned Boxers? No, a thousand 
 times zo. It is recorded in heaven and written on 
 earth, as with a pen of steel dipped in blood, that 
 nothing, absolutely nothing but the mismanagement 
 and treachery of the West toward the East, have in- 
 volved the nations of the world in cruel war. 
 
 (3) Again, we are told that it was politics and 
 business and not religion that enraged the Boxers! 
 
THE PITIFUL OUTCOME, 55 
 
 —that it was diplomatic scheming and trickery iy 
 trade, and not the work of missionaries that 
 brought on this bloody revolution! A little unbiased 
 analysis will clearly exhibit the fact that both thes 
 foreign elements were in the mind of the Boxers 
 when they took life in one hand, and as they con- 
 ceived, their country’s cause in the other. That their 
 wrath was kindled against the national and trade 
 schemers, who they believed were there to rob them 
 of their country, their social and political rights, is 
 evidenced in the fact that they sought to massacre 
 them indiscriminately! Had they not felt that they 
 were a dangerous element to their commonwealth, 
 doubtless they had spared them as confederates. 
 That they had a bitter, it may have been a secret, 
 hatred toward the missionary, is seen (a) in the fact 
 that the better class, the Boxers, ostracized the mis- 
 sionary, and would have nothing to do with his reli- 
 gion, (b) While thus refusing even to put themselves 
 under the influence of this foreign religion, it is evi- 
 dent that they looked upon the missionary as being 
 there for the purpose of undermining the very pillars 
 of their sacred temple. (c) That they regarded the 
 missionary as an enemy and not a friend to the social 
 and religious institutions of the Empire, is clearly seen 
 in the fact that when they decided to kill he was not 
 made an exception. (d) If religion had nothing to 
 do with the uprising, why did the Boxers slay forty 
 thousand of their own countrymen, for no other rea- 
 son than that they had adopted a foreign religion? 
 The herculean effort that is now being made to 
 shift responsibility, reminds one of the old fable of 
 
56 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 the ‘‘mountain in labor.” In the mind of an in- 
 telligent historian it counts for nothing. In the light 
 of past and current events it must be obvious to the 
 unbiased thinker, that all the outrages upon virtue, 
 the destruction of life and property, and the con- 
 fusion of the nations of the world have grown out of 
 the simple fact that the western half of humanity 
 has sought to force upon the eastern half a religion 
 and a civilization which it could not comprehend, 
 and therefore did not want, and which it regards as 
 infinitely beneath its own. 
 
 When we behold the awful desolation of that vast 
 empire, and hear the tramp, tramp of the united 
 armies of the world, when all this panorama of awful 
 destruction passes in pitiful review, we submit, in 
 the spirit of human sympathy, if the time has not 
 come when the Christian world should ca// a halt, 
 and go upon its knees and earnestly inquire of God 
 as to the divine methods of saving the heathen? May 
 the great Father give us ‘‘The wisdom that is from 
 above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, 
 easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits.” 
 
HOME MISSIONS. 57 
 
 (SECTION VII) 
 
 Home WMiissions. 
 
 (1) When the man of sense, reason and sym- 
 pathetic spirit thinks on the one hand of the great 
 Catholic church of Europe and America, and the 
 still greater Protestant church of these countries, 
 and reflects not only on their great lack of sympathy 
 and co-operation, but their oft-repeated criticisms 
 and even bitter antagonisms; and when reflection 
 goes on to compass the divisions, conflicting creeds, 
 and great lack of hearty fellowship among the differ- 
 ent sects of Protestantism; when all this heart- 
 sickening history passes in panoramic view, and he 
 thinks, too, of the prayer of the world’s dying Re- 
 deemer for the unity of His disciples; under such re- 
 flection every noble impulse of his being arises in its 
 majesty lovingly to protest against such unholy 
 division. Certainly he must feel that the one all- 
 absorbing demand of the age is, that Chrzstzanity be 
 Christianized by the unifying spirit of love. 
 
 When we behold Jesus in the compass of His 
 mighty thought, the sweetness of his matchless 
 speech, and the omnipotence of his holy and beau- 
 tiful life; when such sublime and heavenly character 
 passes in review, we realize that, though He lived 
 
58 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 two thousand years ago, He is, nevertheless, ten 
 thousand years in advance of our times. What hu- 
 manity needs, therefore, is not that we send mission- 
 aries to China, but that the Catholics and Protestants 
 of Europe and America, enter with sanctified en- 
 thusiasm upon the work of ‘‘Home Missions.”’ Nor 
 should this work of Christian unification cease, though 
 it take another two thousand years, until every dis- 
 ciple shall have the recognized right to think as God 
 may help him to think, and until this one unified 
 church shall extend to him universal fellowship, not 
 because of what he chances to ¢zmwk on questions of 
 disputed theology, but for the one sublime reason 
 that he manifests the spirit of our loving Lord, in the 
 absence of which he is none of His. 
 
 When the church is thus of ‘‘one accord,” and of 
 one spirit, it will be in the blessed condition of the 
 twelve disciples, and like them, ready to obey the 
 command, ‘‘Go ye into all the (orderly) world and 
 preach the gospel.’”’ Until the church is thus of one 
 accord and prepared to present a solid front, it will 
 be better for China as well as for the religion of love, 
 that we stay at home and not go among other peo- 
 ple to establish antagonistic creeds, build up sectism, 
 and thus divide the church of the living God! Oh! 
 that the disintegrated church could but see its own 
 pitiful plight as the loving Father must see it! 
 
 (2) Not only does the church with its unholy 
 criticisms and disgraceful divisions, demand home 
 mission work, but the wretched condition of millions 
 of our own citizens cries loudly for help. We need 
 only look at the filth of our own door yard to see at 
 
HOME MISSIONS. 59 
 
 a glance that if we act wisely and prudently, we 
 have no time to go abroad. Only think of the filth, 
 degradation and misery of the millions in our towns 
 and cities who were nursed at the breasts of Christian 
 mothers, nurtured in Christian homes and only wait- 
 ing to be touched into manhood by the hearty 
 sympathy of our loving religion. In every city, 
 town, hamlet and country in this great Republic, 
 there is a wide-open door, a hearty welcome, and the 
 promise of a rich harvest. 
 
 Though a nation catalogued as Chrzstzan, we num- 
 ber more devils in human form than any other nation 
 on this earth. To carry the gospel, therefore, ten 
 thousand miles to a people who have a religion vastly 
 better than they are, and who, as yet, are too ignorant 
 at all to comprehend ours, while multiplied thou- 
 sands all about us who were brought up under the 
 gospel, and who have no other religion, are perishing 
 for the ‘‘Bread of Life,’’ seems tenfold more unrea- 
 sonable than for a mother to spend her time looking 
 after the interests of other people’s children to the 
 utter neglect of her own famishing household. 
 
 Dr. Parkhurst, under the head of ‘‘The Devil’s 
 High School in New York,” took an occasion to say, 
 ‘What more flamboyant style of idiocy can our 
 churches and missionary boards devise than to raise 
 millions for the conversion of poor sinners in India 
 and Japan, and. yet make no desperate effort to close 
 up the mills of Satan that are grinding out their hell- 
 ish grist here in our own streets and under the drip- 
 pings of our sanctuaries?’ Echo answers, ‘‘What!”’ 
 
 As no such hordes of desperate sinners as are in 
 
60 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 New York, Chicago, and other cities of the United 
 States, can be found anywhere else on God’s beautiful 
 earth, why are we not bending our every energy to 
 save the lost of our own great American family, and 
 thus have at least one nation Christian, not only in 
 name but in the sweet spirit of universal helpfulness? 
 
 As long as the fact remains that the American 
 Republic has more desperately wicked men just now 
 than have cursed China in two thousand years, just 
 so long the most intelligent people of the Celestial 
 Empire will continue to say, ‘‘Physician, heal thyself.” 
 
 But we are gravely told that the lost people of 
 America have rejected the offers of the gospel, and 
 for this reason, lo! we turn to the Chinese!! To 
 illustrate this proposition, an earnest advocate of for- 
 eign missions, before a large congregation, cited the 
 case of a most skilful physician entering a large hos- 
 pital filled with the sick and dying; he offered his 
 medicine to one and another, but each and all refused 
 his helping hand. Just beyond was another hospital, 
 the suffering inmates of which were only too glad 
 to welcome the doctor and to be cured of their ail- 
 ments; in such case what is the duty of the physician? 
 This illustration was cheered to the echo. 
 
 It is easy to be entirely misled by an illustration 
 which utterly fails to illustrate. There is not the 
 slightest analogy between the figure and the fact de- 
 signed to be prefigured. The thirty-seven million 
 people, more or less, who are in the sin-sick hospital 
 of America have not been made to understand that 
 the gospel of love presents an antidote to their awful 
 ailments, much less have they refused the remedy 
 
HOME MISSIONS 61 
 
 when once pointed out. Moreover, there are multi- 
 plied thousands who were born and are growing up 
 amid the slums and low dives of the great cities, who 
 have never seen a Bible or heard a gospel sermon. 
 In the backwoods country, too, especially in the 
 mountains of the long range of the Alleghenies, there 
 are unnumbered hosts of people who have never 
 heard the sweet story of ‘‘Jesus and His love.” 
 
 Besides, and what needs to be emphasized, these 
 people of no opportunities have no established reli- 
 gion, and no language but ours, and are, therefore, 
 only too glad to open their eyes to the light of intel- 
 ligence. In proof of this statement Berea College, of 
 Berea, Ky., stands as an object lesson. During the 
 last few years thousands of these ignorant moun- 
 taineers have flocked to this Mecca that they might 
 be trained up into Christian manhood. No country 
 on the globe presents such a field for missionary 
 work as does the Republic of America. If the mis- 
 sionary’s heart yearns to save souls he need not cross 
 the seas, they are perishing all about him. ‘‘Con- 
 sistency, thou art a jewel.”’ 
 
 The other half of the illustration is equally mis- 
 leading. The four hundred million of Celestials are 
 not overly inclined to accept the medicine of their 
 own physicians, much less are they clamoring for that 
 of ours. In proof of this double statement we need 
 only look at the degraded condition of Chinese soci- 
 ety and compare it with the lofty standard of morals _ 
 set up by the religion of the Empire; and see fur- 
 ther, how utterly indifferent they are to the procla- 
 mation of the gospel as presented by our faithful 
 
62 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 missionaries. Statistics will clearly show that it re- 
 quires vastly less money, less labor and sacrifice to 
 make Christians out of lost Americans than it does to 
 convert Chinamen, who after they are converted, as 
 has been shown, present no better type of manhood 
 than before. (See section IX, p. 82.) 
 
 Moreover, we have in the United States about nine 
 million of the African race, who have been most 
 shamefully treated and degraded. For more than one 
 hundred years they bent their back to the vile service 
 of the Christian (?) taskmaster, with no rights that 
 others felt bound to respect. They were even denied 
 the privilege of learning how to read, that they 
 might thus be kept in perpetual slavery. All done in 
 the name of a religion of love! Not wonderful that 
 they are comparatively ignorant and superstitious. 
 
 Besides, this is their native land; they have no 
 country but this; no language but ours; and no hope 
 of an exalted manhood but from the hand that 
 crushed them. A more pitiful cry for help never 
 saluted the ear of Christian America. There is not 
 to be found on this round earth another nine million 
 of souls who present such a wide-open door, who 
 would give such a hearty welcome, and who promise 
 such an abundant harvest, as do these nine million of 
 our own countrymen, for whose ostracized condition 
 we are responsible before God. 
 
 All are agreed that the immortal Booker T. Wash- 
 ington has caught the divine method of Christianiz- 
 ing a degraded people. His one main purpose is to 
 give his people zxdustrial and intellectual culture, and 
 thus lay the foundation for a religion of intelligence. 
 
HOME MISSIONS. 63 
 
 Our missionaries would do well to take lessons from 
 this ex slave, this man of God, as to a better method 
 of Christianizing China. 
 
 Contrast the missionary work in the South with 
 that of China, and you will learn the mind of the 
 Spirit. Since slavery was abolished hundreds of 
 Christian school-teachers and missionaries, and mil- 
 lions of money have gone into the Southland, with 
 the most gratifying results. These Christian teachers 
 and missionaries were not handicapped by a foreign 
 language, a foreign religion, or a foreign civilization, 
 but they were received with open arms by those who 
 were hungering and thirsting for the superior advan- 
 tages of theirown countrymen. From the start they 
 reached the most intelligent of the colored people, 
 and through them they gave a mighty uplift to the 
 entire African race. The very thing which has not 
 been done in China. 
 
 It is safe to say that since the world began, no race 
 of people ever made such long and rapid strides 
 along lines of Christian civilization as the African 
 race has made during the last thirty-five years. And 
 what they have done is only prophetic of what they 
 will do if only we are true to those whom the Father 
 has left to our care. If we hada united church we 
 could do vastly better. 
 
 In wide contrast with this home field of matchless 
 opportunity and good results, think of those Mon- 
 golians on the other side of the earth, with their own 
 country, their own language, their own religion, their 
 own civilization, and with a profound desire that we 
 stay at home until we are invited. 
 
64 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 In view of the results of the last one hundred years 
 of missionary work in China, it must be obvious to 
 every unbiased mind, that it is worse than useless to 
 give another dollar or send another missionary to the 
 Celestial Empire until some new method is adopted, 
 that will secure the blessing of God, and thus give 
 promise of success. As there is no ‘‘evidence of 
 success like success,’’ so there is no evidence of bad 
 methods like bad results. It is bad enough that all 
 the converts should be either slaughtered or scat- 
 tered; worse still, that the whole world should be in 
 an uproar of cruel war. 
 
 In the face of all this sorrowful outcome, we are 
 told that ‘‘God has abundantly blessed the missionary 
 work in China!”” In the presence of all the tangible 
 evidence in the case, can there be a statement more 
 absurd? If what has come to pass in China is proof 
 of the divine pleasure, can we imagine any outcome 
 that would prove the divine displeasure? Good effect 
 must be in evidence, else common sense will not 
 believe that God has blessed the cause. God- 
 appointed means are attended with God-honoring 
 results. But as no good ‘‘results” are in evidence, it 
 is marvelously manifest that the ‘‘means’”’ were not 
 of divine appointment. 
 
HOW SHALL CHINA BE CHISTIANIZED? 65 
 
 SECTION (VIII) 
 How Shall China be Christianized? 
 
 At the end of more than one hundred years of 
 honest toil, which has resulted in infinitely worse 
 than an utter failure, the problem which now con- 
 fronts Europe and America is, What is the divine 
 method by which the people of China shall be lifted 
 from the depths of idolatry into the lofty heights of 
 the loving worship of the ‘‘one God and Father of 
 us all”? In attempting to answer this matchless 
 question we should not only learn from past sad ex- 
 perience, but we should especially seek to know the 
 mind of God in his dealing with the infancy of our 
 race. 
 
 The thread of thought that has run through the 
 preceding line of reasoning has been that of prepara- 
 tion. Certainly it must be apparent to the close 
 observer of divine affairs, that this law of preparation 
 has been the central and fundamental law by which 
 God has governed His animate and inanimate uni- 
 verse. . It is safe to say that we will never Christian- 
 ize China until we recognize her unprepared condi- 
 tion, and then begin to work after the divine pattern 
 by beginning at the dotfom and training upward, and 
 
 not at the dof, as heretofore, and training downward! 
 5 
 
66 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 (1) As we are to deal with a country that is 
 wholly given to polytheism and idolatry, and has 
 been for more than a thousand years, we shall make 
 no mistake if only we pattern after God’s method of 
 dealing with that kind of people! When the world 
 was given to the belief and worship of many gods, 
 Infinite Wisdom did not send a missionary to tell 
 these ignorant people that ‘‘God so loved the world.” 
 Such a course would have been to ‘‘begin at the 
 top.” Proposing to ‘‘train upward,’”’ Omniscience 
 sent Moses to proclaim the foundation truth, ‘‘Hear, 
 O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.” In the 
 face of polytheism and idolatry, Moses said nothing 
 of God as universal Father: this had been to ‘‘cast 
 pearls before swine.’”’ Only to those who compre- 
 hended the truth of monotheism, the thought of one 
 God, and who were thus prepared, did he teach the 
 duty of loving God. Until we adopt this divine 
 method of getting China ready for the final message, 
 ‘God is love,’”’ we need hope for nothing but disaster 
 after disaster. 
 
 (2) From the foregoing it must be obvious that 
 our first work in China is one of elimination. We 
 must work after the divine ideal and first drive from 
 the Chinese mind the stupid ignorance of ‘‘lords 
 many and gods many,” and the long-fixed habit of 
 worshiping these tutelary imps of the imagination. 
 Nor is this an easy task. It is a habit as well-nigh 
 fixed as the spots on the leopard. As it is easier by 
 far to teach the child to tell the truth than it isto 
 get the fourteen-year-old boy to quit the habit of 
 lying, so the work of getting the Chinaman to stop 
 
HOW SHALL CHINA BE CHRISTIANIZED? 67 
 
 worshiping his idol is vastly greater than if he had no 
 religion at all. But as this is an absolute necessity, 
 before he can learn to love God, as seen in the 
 Father’s methods, and as taught in mental philoso- 
 phy, it must therefore be done frst even though it 
 require a thousand years of faithful service. 
 
 (a) We, as Anglo-Saxons, as it would seem, need 
 only hope to accomplish this great work of edzmina- 
 tion by teaching them our own language. It seems 
 like worse than wasted time for an Englishman to go 
 to China on the mission of civilization and first 
 devote much precious time to the study of an uuczv- 
 tlized language! Indeed, the Chinese monosyllabic, 
 hieroglyphic speech is hardly to be catalogued as a 
 language. With its more than forty different dialects, 
 and its innumerable guttural notes and no alphabet, 
 it is the most poverty stricken language on earth. 
 
 For civilization, therefore, to stop to study the 
 miserable speech of heathenism, is to reverse the 
 wheels of progress. The aggregation of results from 
 the beginning of human history until now, clearly 
 indicates the final unity and universal sympathy of the 
 race of mankind. The far off coming day of the ab- 
 solute oneness of mankind implies wuzty of language. 
 The English language, because of its homogeneity of 
 expression, the perfection of its philosophy, and its 
 unparalleled progress, is pointed to as ¢hé language 
 which is to become as widespread and as universal 
 as the race of mankind. If not, then it would seem 
 that the apex of the pyramid of all speech is not the 
 point toward which the lines of the shaft converge. 
 
 Though in its infancy, it is, nevertheless, the giant 
 
68 THE CHINESE PROBLEM, 
 
 of all the ages. The English language is to-day the 
 fathomless fountain into which the rich streams of 
 the Orient and Occident have been pouring their 
 floods of art, philosophy, invention, discovery, liter- 
 ature, in prose and poetry, during the last six hun- 
 dred years. The way, therefore, for the English to 
 civilize China, Persia, Egypt, Africa, or the islands of 
 the sea, is to begin by teaching them our language 
 which illustrates the universal law of Unzty zn Diversity. 
 
 Our new possessions in’ the Orient just now pre- 
 
 sent an object lesson eminently worthy of study. 
 } (!) The peoples of the Philippine-Archipelago have 
 languages of their own, Tagalese and Bisayan, which 
 are better than that of China. Like that of the 
 Celestials, however, their languages have degenerated 
 and taken on many silly dialects. Yet enough of 
 the features of the old native tongues are left to war- 
 rant the remark that they are superior to the mono- 
 syllabic, hieroglyphic speech of the Chinese. 
 
 (!!) Since Spain first took possession of these 
 islands in the name of its’ king, the lofty truths of 
 Christianity have been the principal religion taught. 
 But Christianity among these ignorant islanders has 
 proved to be too exalted for!their comprehension. 
 What happened in Europe during the middle or 
 ‘‘dark ages’”’ has been repeated by the half-barbarians 
 of the Archipelago, namely, while Christianity has 
 proved to be utterly useless to the people, its 
 sublimely beautiful truths have been dragged down 
 to the level of their stupid ignorance. 
 
 (!!!) The point to be remembered is, that the 
 United States government, being entirely free from 
 
HOW SHALL CHINA BE CHRISTIANIZED? 69 
 
 the blinding spirit of sectism, in its efforts to civilize 
 these far-off peoples, has proposed to begin at the 
 bottom. With a view to preparation, and for the 
 wise purpose of laying a rock foundation, deep and 
 broad, for the mighty temple of our Christian civili- 
 zation, and not the sandy base of a heathenish 
 speech, our government has recently decided to send 
 a thousand school-teachers, charged with the duty ot 
 entirely ignoring their languages, and of training 
 those natives strictly in the use of the English. If 
 the authorities at Washington would send ten 
 thousand more school-teachers, the ‘‘common people’”’ 
 would respond, ‘‘Amen.” . 
 
 With no disposition to make proselytes, the gov- 
 ernment has recognized the obvious fact, that what 
 those benighted countrymen need, and must have, is 
 ‘intellectual enlightenment.’’ While these ignorant 
 people have no religion but that entitled ‘‘Christian,” 
 yet common sense sees at a glance, that Christianity 
 can make no progress until the people have been 
 trained up into an intelligence that will make it pos- 
 sible for them to comprehend and appreciate the 
 exalted truths of the gospel. But for the worship 
 of the missionary fetish we might hope that mission- 
 ary boards would learn a new method from this great 
 non-sectarian movement of the government. 
 
 (b) Recognizing the fact that the Chinese mind 
 during the ages has become so fossilized by the super- 
 stition of a false religion that it is next to impossible to 
 impress it with the lofty truths of the gospel, it seems 
 wise to begin with the c/z/dren. In virtue of the 
 
 stupendous undertaking of changing the long con- 
 6 
 
7O THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 tinued habit of polytheistic and idolatrous thinking, 
 the philosophical method is to leave the adults, 
 whose minds are crystallized, and give our attention 
 mainly to those whose habits are not yet fixed. 
 Even in this country we have learned, after many, 
 many sad /azlures, that the only way to have a 
 nation of native born Christians, is by the prayer- 
 ful training of the children from infancy to man- 
 hood. ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me.” 
 
 Arrogant infidelity and bald atheism are just now 
 completely balked in the presence of the greatly 
 increased and rapidly increasing hosts of Sabbath 
 school children, Christian Endeavorers and Epworth 
 Leaguers. Anticipating their inevitable Waterloo, 
 atheists are fleeing from their guns and taking shelter 
 under the white flag of Agnosticism, ‘‘I don’t know, 
 you don’t know.”” Among all the galaxy of stars, 
 outside the ‘‘Star of Bethlehem,” no one inspires 
 such hope of a unified church and a saved world, as 
 does that of the millions of children who are now 
 being trained in the loving school of Christ. 
 
 The one great method of converting China to a 
 civilization, based on the doctrine of God as Father, 
 . is in the training of its children to speak our tongue, 
 to understand our literature, to study our scholarship, 
 the basic truth of which is one Almighty Father, and 
 thus step by step, lead them up to that partly to be 
 understood but zwmeasurable truth, ‘‘God zs Love.”’ 
 
 (c) We should, therefore, send, not the infidel 
 or the agnostic, much less the atheist, but, the quali- 
 fied Christian school-teacher. Beginning thus with 
 the twigs of our humanity, we might hope that by 
 
HOW SHALL CHINA BE CHRISTIANIZED? 71 
 
 and by we shall have a great tree loaded with ripe 
 fruit. While it seems to be a slow and tardy way, it 
 is, nevertheless, God’s way. Jt would be our way but 
 for our haste, which makes waste, and is a ‘‘zeal with- 
 out knowledge.’’ While this method of the Christian 
 school-teacher before the missionary, the  school- 
 house before the temple, promises nothing for sect- 
 ism, it, nevertheless, predicts a wonderful uplift for 
 the people of China. 
 
 Nor would this system of Christian benevolence 
 excite any prejudice in the minds of those Celestials! 
 While, as we have shown, the leading minds of China 
 are not favorably influenced by our religion, they are, 
 nevertheless, strongly inclined to our superior schol- 
 arship. Speaking of the introduction of our scientific 
 works, Chamber’s Encyclopedia has this to say, ‘It 
 is worthy of remark that these books were eagerly 
 sought after and excited a deep interest among their 
 litera.” Their leading men are frank to ac- 
 knowledge that our invention, our discovery, our 
 language, and our scholarship, are far in advance of 
 theirs. We thus have a wide-open door to enter 
 China, especially as kindergarten teachers charged 
 with the high duty of training the children along 
 lines of sense and reason, of ethics and exalted man- 
 hood, and that, too, in our own language. 
 
 From all this it would seem like folly intensified 
 for our missionaries to go to China first to learn their 
 semi-barbarous language, and then with but a mere 
 smattering of that monosyllabic tongue, stand up to 
 preach the gospel to a crowd whose chief business 
 seems to be to smoke and to criticise the dress, the 
 
72 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 manner and the bad pronunciation of the preacher. 
 Professor Haner, the missionary to whom reference 
 has been made, in his experience before a smoking 
 crowd, said: ‘‘While all eyes were fixed on me, and I 
 began to think that I was gaining their attention, 
 some one in the company would sing out, ‘How 
 much cost that brass tooth in your mouth? While 
 another would yell, ‘What cost you that coat?’ and 
 still another, ‘Who taught you our language?” We 
 inquired, ‘‘How, at yourage, did you learn to speak 
 their language correctly?” He replied, ‘‘I have my 
 friends criticise my speech.” 
 
 Infinitely better, home or abroad, that the preacher 
 be the best critic as to what he says and how he says 
 it. The first thing on the programme of saving 
 China is to teach its people, especially the children, 
 the English language, and thus lay the foundation 
 deep and broad for our Anglo-Saxon civilization. 
 Their polytheistic speech is a ‘‘bed shorter than that 
 a man can stretch himself on, and a covering nar- 
 rower than that he can wrap himself in.” 
 
 (3) Having taught them our language, the school- 
 teacher can proceed to instruct them along lines of 
 natural science, the central and fundamental truth of 
 which is God! 
 
 ‘God! let the torrents like a shout of nations 
 Answer, and let the ice plains echo, God! 
 
 God, sing the meadow streams with gladsome voice; 
 Ye pine groves with your soft and soul-like sound 
 And they too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder—God! 
 
 Tell thou the silent sky, 
 And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 
 Earth, with her thousand voices praises God.’’ 
 
HOW SHALL CHINA BE CRISTIANIZED? 73 
 
 As every ray of light shoots out from yonder 
 burning sun, and but for which there would be noth- 
 ing but the blackness of darkness, so every natural 
 philosophy shoots out from God, but for whom the 
 500,000 worlds which now come within the range of 
 the telescope, would lapse into confusion. All 
 natural philosophies are but the tracks of God's . 
 chariot wheels which mark His everlasting going. 
 As God made the intellectual soul a fit complement 
 to philosophy, that it might track His endless going, 
 he, therefore, who studies philosophy and stops short 
 of God, philosophy in his case has utterly failed to 
 answer the purpose of its divine appointment. And 
 the college which confers the arts degree upon a 
 young man because he has a smattering of Greek, 
 etcetera, and yet is utterly ignorant of God, has un- 
 wittingly recruited one more to the great army of 
 fools. The loving thought of God must lie at the 
 foundation of all true scholarship and noble man- 
 hood, as well as at the basis of all God-honored 
 civilizations. When the matchless truth of one God 
 has driven from the Chinese mind the superstitious 
 thought of ‘‘gods many and lords many,” then, and 
 not until then, will it be prepared to appreciate the 
 final message, ‘‘God is Love.”’ 
 
 All this goes upon the supposition of a hearty 
 willingness on the part of China. If such peaceful 
 and loving efforts at playing the part of the good 
 Samaritan, only excite the antagonism of those 
 Mongolians, it will be in evidence that they are a 
 race of degenerates, and that the degeneracy which 
 began more than a thousand years ago, will continue 
 
74 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 until it shall be for the glory of God and the elevation 
 of mankind, that they be swept from the face of the 
 earth as were the antediluvians. Such a thought, 
 however, hardly comes within the purview of a pos- 
 sibility. 
 
 Those multiplied millions of ignorant human 
 beings, who are naturally peace-loving, who for un- 
 told ages have occupied that vast country of flowers, 
 fruits and singing birds; and who are the rightful 
 owners of all they survey, are only waiting, in the 
 providence of God, to be touched into intelligent 
 manhood by the divine means now held in the hands 
 of Christian Europe and America. If as disciples of 
 the loving Master, we were of ‘‘one accord” in lov- 
 ing methods, the Almighty Father would be pleased 
 to bless the strong who seek to lift up the weak, the 
 intelligent who strive to enlighten the ignorant so 
 that they may see the folly and curse of idolatry. 
 
 If at the end of one thousand years, the native in- 
 tellect has been so trained as to discover the debas- 
 ing folly of worshiping these ‘‘imps of the imagina- 
 tion,’’ and by the radiance of its intelligence has 
 discovered the sublime truth of one Almighty as 
 central to all philosophies, then verily, shall we 
 ‘‘prepare the way of the Lord and make straight in 
 the desert a highway for our God.” 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 75 
 
 SECTION (IX) 
 Conclusion of the Whole Matter. 
 
 Men of intelligence and piety differ widely in the 
 details of philosophy, morals and theology; never- 
 theless, they are mainly agreed as to the fundamentals 
 of science, ethics and religion. Philosophers and 
 theologians who have given the matter any seri- 
 ous thought, are substantially at agreement touch- 
 ing the essential truths which lie at the foundation ot 
 the character of a manly man. To sum up the fol- 
 lowing paramount philosophies is to have the ‘‘con- 
 clusion of the whole matter.” 
 
 First. The human soul has been created subject to 
 laws. These divine statutes are recognized by intel- 
 ligence as the counterpart of the soul’s nature and 
 necessity. As the spiritual man is made for eternity, 
 while material worlds are transitory; and as these 
 govermental laws were enacted in the councils of in- 
 finite wisdom and boundless benovelence, they are, 
 therefore, more fixed than the stars. We may plead 
 ignorance as an excuse for our disobedience, never- 
 theless the law is inexorable. 
 
 Second. All are agreed that the soul’s growth into 
 lofty manhood depends wholly upon its knowledge 
 of and obedience to these immutable enactments. 
 
76 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 Even to touch the spirit of a manly man, is to be as- 
 sured that he dwells in the courts of the Lord as an 
 obedient servant. No one hesitates to believe that 
 exalted manhood is in the ratio of conformity to the 
 divine administration of psychological law. The sum 
 of loving obedience is the exact measure of the man, 
 neither more nor less. The depths of one’s degra- 
 dation, too, tell the entire story of his ignorance and 
 transgression. , 
 
 Third. Not only does lofty character rest on the 
 foundation of obedience but conscious contentment is 
 in the ratio of one’s harmony with the administration 
 of divine affairs. As ‘‘perfect peace” is the product 
 of perfect harmony, so the troubled spirit is the re- 
 sult of inward confusion. As the soul’s well-being 
 depends wholly on its obedience to the laws of its 
 being, so, therefore, these two states of mind, quiet 
 and disquiet, serve the good purpose of keeping man 
 in the ‘‘narrow. way.” Conscience and God being 
 on the same side, the divine mission of the former is 
 to keep the soul in perfect harmony with the laws of 
 the latter. When man acts in perfect keeping 
 with his exalted sense of rzght, conscience smiles 
 peacefully that he may be kept in the way of 
 righteousness ; but when he violates the law of right 
 doing, by ever so little, conscience gently reminds 
 him of the infinite fact that ‘‘sin wrongs the soul,”’ 
 and if he persist in his downward way, this ‘‘dis- 
 turber of the soul” will ‘fiercely brandish a sharp 
 scourge within.” 
 
 Fourth. From the foregoing, next to axiomatical 
 truths, it must be apparent to the least attentive ob- 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 77 
 
 server, that the one supreme duty of every man is to 
 study to know what these divine laws of his nature 
 are, and then to bring himself into blissful harmony 
 with their heavenly administration. If God’s typical 
 manhood, as everybody knows, hinges on man’s con- 
 formity to these divine requirements, and as experi- 
 ence tells us that we have all the peace we live for in 
 obedience, and all the unrest we work for in disobedi- 
 ence, can there be such an immeasurable service as 
 that of trying to comprehend these laws of the soul, 
 and then bending every energy to bring ourselves into 
 perfect accord with the harmonies of the universe? 
 As this is the most exalted service, so it is the most 
 difficult. This thought is in perfect keeping with the 
 ‘‘conclusion of the whole matter” as summed up by 
 the wise man, ‘‘Fear God and keep His command- 
 ments, for this is the whole duty of man.”’ 
 
 Fifth. Neither philosophers nor theologians are in 
 dispute as to what these laws of the soul are! What- 
 ever other divine precepts there may be, all are 
 agreed that God’s typical manhood is the legitimate 
 product of obedience to the laws of faith, honesty, 
 truth, justice, kindness'and love. While fazth is the 
 basic law of the temple of manliness, Jove is the 
 crowning tower of that noble structure. As the apex 
 of a pyramid is that point toward which all the lines 
 of the shaft converge, so perfect obedience to the one 
 law of love is the pinnacle of loftiest manhood toward 
 which all other laws of the soul point. As the sun is 
 central to the solar system, because of his greater at- 
 tractive power, so the law of Jove is central to the en- 
 tire system of law, for the reason that it stands for 
 
78 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 Omnipotence ‘‘God is Love.”’ Asall the planets and 
 satellites revolve around the sun, so all the divine 
 requirements, great and small, circle around the 
 matchless law of ‘‘love to God and love to man.” 
 ‘(Love never faileth.”’ 
 
 Sixth. All are agreed, too, that for man to compre- 
 hend this supreme law of love and bring himself into 
 harmony with its divine administration, is the grand- 
 est achievement of the human soul. While the at- 
 tainment of ‘‘perfect love,” which ‘‘casteth out fear,” 
 is the ultimate end of the divine appointment of the 
 race of mankind, it has therefore been the one ob- 
 jective point toward which humanity has been wend- 
 ing its way during all these weary centuries. And 
 now at the end of all the toilsome ages how compara- 
 tively few understand, by a most blessed experience, 
 the unspeakable good that comes to the soul because 
 of its knowledge of and obedience to this supreme 
 law of love.. In the light of the experience of the best 
 men of the ages, it is safe to say that the wisest man 
 in the wide world, in the eyes of our benevolent 
 Creator, may not be the man who knows most of 
 mathematics and the science of the stars, but it is the 
 man who knows most of God as universal Father and 
 man as universal brother. 
 
 Seventh. Asthe comprehension of this apex law of 
 the soul was to be humanity’s final victory, at the end 
 of the ages, Jesus came that He might make pos- 
 sible this final triumph. He came to give the ‘‘new 
 commandment.’’ Our Lord’s mission, therefore, was: 
 nothing less, it could have been nothing more, than 
 to make known the soul’s immeasurable law of love. 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 79 
 
 As a knowledge of this supreme law of love neces- 
 sarily involves an experimental knowledge of the 
 laws of honesty, truth, justice, kindness, etc., and as 
 exalted manhood is the legitimate product of obedi- 
 ence to these laws, as everybody knows, it follows, 
 therefore, that the Christ religion of love is but a 
 duplicate copy of the soul’s nature and necessity. 
 Moreover, it clearly shows that Christianity per se, 
 pure and simple, forever bars infidelity, and that its 
 only stock in trade has been, is now and must forever 
 be, its criticisms of human theology. 
 
 Eighth. From the foregoing propositions it must 
 be obvious to the careful reader, that as even a partial 
 intellectual comprehension of the measureless truth 
 of the Almighty’s infinite benevolence is the grand- 
 est victory of the human mind, it must follow, as a 
 philosophical necessity, that if China ever reaches 
 these exalted heights her people must begin at the 
 bottom and not at the op. We must not forget the 
 foregoing logic: (1) The degrading doctrine of 
 polytheism and idolatry must be elimznated, if it re- 
 quire a thousand years of faithful training. (2) When 
 the Christian school-teacher, by working mainly with 
 the children, and with the English language, has 
 succeeded in driving from the Chinese mind the long 
 fixed thought of ‘lords many and gods many,”’ he is 
 then ready to teach China, as Moses taught Israel, 
 the sublime doctrine of one God, and like Moses, lay 
 the foundation for the final message, ‘‘God is Love.”’ 
 (3) When the Christian school-teacher has done his 
 perfect work, it may be at the end of centuries, by 
 that time we may reasonably hope that sectism shall 
 
80 THE CHINESE PROBLEM... 
 
 have played its cruel part, and the church, united in 
 the sweet fellowship of a universal love, may send 
 her missionaries to China to preach the gospel. 
 
 In view of the foregoing conceded steps of phi- 
 losophy, if some such divine plan be not adopted, it 
 is safe to predict that the heart-sickening scenes of 
 the past will continue to disgrace our holy Christiani- 
 ty. Having shown from mental philosophy, from 
 the divine plan of salvation, and from Him whose 
 words are yea and amen, that the modern methods 
 of dealing with China must, of necessity, result in 
 nothing but miserable failure, we ask the candid 
 reader prayerfully to examine the following figures 
 which join the foregoing testimony in proving be- 
 yond doubt that millions of money have been spent, 
 thousands of lives sacrificed, the whole Christian 
 world in arms, and absolutely worse than nothing to 
 show for the enormous sacrifice: 
 
 The following statistics have been collated by the 
 Reynolds Newspaper (London) as given by The 
 Literary Digest. ‘‘The writer states that the Church 
 Missionary Society (Church of England) has an an- 
 nual income of about $2,000,000. The collection 
 of this money alone costs about $129,000; adminis- 
 tration costs about $79,500; salaries to nineteen 
 clergymen as association secretaries amount to 
 $27,160. The London Missionary Society has an 
 income of about $750,840 yearly, while its foreign 
 secretary, Rev. M. W. Thompson, receives about 
 $4,000 per annum, and others receive proportion- 
 ately large amounts.”’ 
 
 The writer refers to other denominations outside 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 8I 
 
 the Church of England, whose receipts and ex- 
 penditures are comparatively about the same. He 
 then inquires, ‘‘What are the results abroad?” It is 
 generous and noble for the public magnanimously to 
 respond to the earnest appeals of Missionary Boards, 
 if only it be for the benefit of mankind and for the 
 glory of God. But when it results inan unmitigated 
 curse to humanity anda dishonor to the great Father, 
 then it is time to calla halt. As to ‘‘results,” the 
 writer says, ‘In India, with its population of 350,- 
 000,000, the number of converts made by the Church 
 Missionary Society, after more than a century’s labor, 
 is today 35,640, though no fewer than 3,424 agents 
 are at work. . . . The above number includes 
 the helpless children. In the year 1889-90, there 
 was a gain of 1,836, mostly the babes of converts. 
 Thus it took two missionary agents and a sum of 
 $565, to secure one convert, babe or adult, in a 
 year. The other societies have even a more unsatis- 
 factory record.” 
 
 ‘As further cited, ‘‘Mr. W. S. Caine, M. P., on his 
 recent return from India, writing in the Birmingham 
 Post, February 14, 1889, thus sums up his opinion 
 of the attempt to ‘Christianize’ India. Educated 
 India is looking for a religion, but turns its back on 
 Christ and His teaching as presented by the mission- 
 ary. As far as turning the young men they educate 
 into Christians, the failure is complete and unmis- 
 takable.”’ Other travelers are referred to as making 
 similar reports. 
 
 Having had the testimony of travelers, the evi- 
 dence given by the Church Missionary Society for 
 
82 THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 
 
 1900 is even more to the point, going to show the 
 absolute worthlessness of missionary work in India. 
 It says, ‘‘At present there is rather a low standard 
 of Christian living. It is the same story that was 
 told some years ago by the Rev. Sidney Smith, that 
 the native that bore the name Christian was com- 
 monly nothing more than a drunken reprobate, who 
 conceives himself at liberty to eat and drink anything 
 he pleases, and annexes hardly any other meaning to 
 Christianity.” 
 
 We thus have the report, not only of unbiased 
 travelers in India, but that given by the great central 
 Missionary Board itself, going to show that the con- 
 verted idol worshiper is a worse character after con- 
 version than he was before. When figures show that 
 it requires the labor of two men for one year, and 
 the expenditure of $565, to convert one Indian, 
 and he a worse sinner after conversion than he was 
 before, it is somewhat amazing!! But for our adit 
 of thinking, it would be simply astounding!!! Whar 
 is true of India is equally true of China, Japan, or 
 any other people on the globe whose mind is sur- 
 charged with the silly and degrading doctrine of 
 polytheism and consequent idolatry. It may be un- 
 intentional, but nevertheless, when we preach to 
 such a people the loftiest truth that ever challenged 
 human intelligence, we not only disregard the in- 
 structions of our divine Master, go contrary to the 
 teaching of mental philosophy, and grossly violate 
 God’s immutable law of preparation, but we unwit- 
 tingly perpetrate upon credulous humanity the most 
 colossal fraud the angels ever witnessed! 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 83 
 
 When we think ourselves up out of the old line of 
 thought, and calmly and prayerfully consider the 
 enormous sacrifices of the last one hundred years, 
 and then impassionately view the heart-sickening re- 
 sults of all this honest toil, can even imagination 
 conceive a greater exhibition of imbecility, than for 
 the Missionary Boards to continue the old methods 
 which God never blessed and never will? By adopt- 
 ing God’s method as herein suggested, it will come 
 to pass in the long-off future, that ‘‘the way of the 
 Lord” will be so well prepared that our brethren of 
 the Celestial Empire will send the Macedonian cry, 
 “Come over and help us.” When that glad day 
 shall dawn, and Europe and America have become 
 so far Christianized as to be able to ‘‘keep the unity 
 of the spirit in the bond of peace,’ and thus present 
 a solid front, then in the sweet fellowship of a uni- 
 versal love the missionaries may flock to China to 
 learn ‘‘war no more,” but to preach the inaugural 
 of a glorious hope; and under the leadership of the 
 loving Christ, and by the peaceful ‘Sword of the 
 Spirit,” take up the triumphal march, and together 
 with India, China, Japan, the nations of the earth 
 and the islands of the sea, under the one sweet spirit 
 of omnipotent love they ‘‘shall go out with joy, 
 and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the 
 hills shall break forth before you into singing, and 
 all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” 
 God speed the good time coming. Amen. 
 
 ‘ 
 
McWHINNEY’S WORKS. 
 
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