the Often Door

AN ADDRESS DELiVEREb BEFORE THE
AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSfONARX. UNION
AT ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA} M4r 22y teoz • >
BENJAMIN M HXHN>D.D.

AMERICAN hAPflST MISSIONARr; UNION
TRBMONT 5BMPTJE, BOSTON

THE MISSIONARY AT
THE OPEN DOOR
Civilization Transformed

HERE are new heavens and a new earth.
Civilization is in the act of revolution.
There are signs in the heavens above
and the earth beneath. Since the days
of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ma
gellan, there has not been another such
change in trade, industry and commerce. When these
discoverers set sail the Mediterranean was the middle sea
of the world ; it had drawn to itself the wealth, power
and culture of the Orient, and the art and resources
of mankind were concentrated in the hands of the Latin
races. When they returned, civilization turned about
and the Mediterranean became but an estuary and a
port of refuge and supply. The nations faced toward
the Atlantic. The wealth and resources of the world
were transported, and deposited in the hands of the
northern peoples. The decadence of the Latin races
was insured, and causes of war which disturbed the
equilibrium of Europe for four centuries were provided
by the discovery of the new lands to the west and the
treasures of Mexico and Peru.

Piety of the Conquistador.es
These discoverers were as devout as they were ad
venturous. They flew at the masthead the ensign of
the Cross, while they stored the hold with gunpowder,
cutlasses, and shackles for the aboriginal tribes. They
embellished their speech with gospel incidents and swore
by the life, the blood, the wounds, the death and the
mother of God. If they could not inculcate the cate
chism, they could baptize the heathen and teach them
to swear in Christian fashion. They named their gar
risons San Juan, Santiago, San Salvador and Vera Cruz.
They added a touch of realism to these devout names,
for they made their every settlement a Golgotha for
the natives ; and we have embellished our currency with
a picture of the devotional landing of Columbus.
Present Spirit of Trade
In our day there has been a change in our view of
the relations of religion and commerce. The conquista-
dores were commercial in their aims, but religious in
their professions. We also are commercial, but we sep
arate our religious motives from our purposes of trade.
Our economists have taught us that trade is sufficient
unto itself, has motives and laws of its own, and does
not stand in need of moral or religious counsel. We
have discovered that commerce is the life-blood of the
world, that all prosperity must rest upon commercial
success, that trade is the constant motive of politics,
and that the interests of humanity are but fitfully rep
resented in our policies. By commerce civilization is
disseminated, and in the interest of commerce savage
tribes are debauched and exterminated. We know that
commerce is the chief guarantee of peace and the per-

manent cause of war ; commerce saps and shifts the
shore lines of population and nationality and over
whelms solemn treaties and covenants.
Portents of Change
The revolution of civilization in 1492 was heralded
by the discovery of gunpowder and the mariner's com
pass, and the laboratory of the inventor was the first to
prophesy in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The period of Atlantic commerce was marked by the
development of the square-rigged vessel with its geyser
of canvas drifting over the changing mirrors of the
ocean ; but in the latter half of the nineteenth century
we substituted steel for wood, and gave the ships com
mand of wind and current by the reciprocating engine
and steam turbine. We communicate from hemisphere
to hemisphere by an ethereal whisper above the seas
where our disused cables lie forgotten.
New Political Issues
As the Atlantic has supplanted the Mediterranean,
so the Pacific supplants the Atlantic as the middle
sea of civilization. The political questions which
agitated Europe — the Triple Alliance, the Balance of
Power and the Burdensome Armaments of the Con
tinent — have lost their interest for us; we are now
concerned about the Open Door and the Partition of
China. Politics have ceased to be international ; they
have become cosmic. As these are questions which
intimately concern the world-wide commission of this
society, let us give our attention to the causes which
have led to this last great revolution in trade and poli
tics, to the probable fortunes of the higher interests of
humanity in the present advance in the mental and
3

material interests of the world, and to the opportunities
which these changes will present for the advancement
of the Kingdom of Heaven.
I. Trade Has Forced the Door
German Industrial Depression and the Fall of
Otto Von Bismarck
/HE omens of change were not well read
by the weatherwise in 1888, when Will
iam II ascended the throne of Germany.
The public was amused and delighted with
 the spectacle of his youthful pomposity
and Hohenzollern arrogance. His rash display of im
perialism was regarded as an exhibition of folly which
could not alter the course of triumphant popular liberty.
It was remembered that within fifty years all govern
ments in Europe, save one, had undergone a change.
The teaching of Karl Marx had borne fruit in Germany
and the Socialists were an ever more powerful party in
the Reichstag. But a more serious view of the situation
was assumed by the world at large when, in 1890, the
youthful prince dismissed the Iron Chancellor, Otto
von Bismarck, and swept away at a stroke a responsible
ministry to prepare the path of a direct imperial admin
istration of the country. The " man of blood and iron "
was humiliated. His genius had elevated the house of
Hohenzollern to the head of the united German Em
pire. He it was who held at bay the hostile nations of
Europe while he consolidated, in the interest of Will
iam I, the divided and discordant states of Germany.
Russia was on his right, to crush by superior might and
mass ; France on his left, smouldering with smothered
resentments. By his skill and adroitness he had con-

trolled the course of legislation in the new empire. He
alone could restrain the impetuosity and power of the
Socialists. While the public sorrowed at the fall of so
great a minister, statesmen shuddered when the presi
dent of the cabinets of Europe was overthrown. They
saw the shadow of a continental disaster creeping over
the breadth of Europe. They knew that peace was but
armed neutrality, the pause of countervailing thrusts
and strains. There had been no diminution of energy.
There was inaction, the poise of mutually arrested forces.
A failure properly to trim the balance of the powers
might release all the hostilities and discontents of the
continent in mutual destruction and collapse. Labor
was discontented. There was popular distress. Inge
nuity in manufacture had glutted the markets of civil
ization and congested industries. By his own skill the
laborer was deprived of occupation. How to prevent
overproduction was the problem of manufacturers. The
release of the laborer furnished a recruit to the already
burdensome armies. The workman was subject to
increased taxation. The commodities on which he de
pended, the necessaries of life, were enhanced in price.
There were fears in high quarters that he would take
counsel of his need and privations and light his miseries
with the conflagration of the shops where he had earned
his bread. There was abundant occasion for alarm when
Bismarck resigned. It is the dramatic and prophetic
moment of European politics and of the fortunes of
civilization in the twentieth century. Europe shook
when the Iron Chancellor fell.
Statesmanship of William II
Now that a decade has passed since that event took
place, we are able to estimate the consequences of the
5

arbitrary decision of William II. He has demonstrated
that the army of Germany is a school of imperialism
and subordination more effective than the teachings of
Karl Marx or the discussions and deliberations of the
Reichstag. He has changed the backdoor policy of
Germany, which had been " the pole of all the bayo
nets of Europe," for the adventure of the commerce of
the world. He has challenged the maritime supremacy
of England, and German firms are taking possession of
the merchant ships and the coastwise trade of Asia. He
has furnished employment for the industries of his
country, and the smoke of Essen and Stettin goes up
forever. He has solved the question of overproduc
tion, and, for the moment, he has quieted the demo
cratic tendencies within his empire. He has moved the
Partition of China instead of the Triple Alliance. The
Open Door is the question which has supplanted the
Balance of Power. Russian Ambition
But while Germany may mark the apparent moment
when this revolution in trade and politics occurred, there
were other influences at work long before the tension
of European politics was relieved by the ambition of
the nations to secure the commerce of Asia. After the
current has set the ice floes begin to move. The pace
of Europe was not set by commercialized Germany, but
by a country of undeveloped industries and of limitless
territory. When Peter the Great, single-handed, trans
ported civilization bodily into Russia, he implanted in
the heart of the Slav an aspiration for the deep. The
unoccupied wildernesses of Siberia stretched away to the
shores of the Kamchatka Sea. Besides a few hamlets and
the skin tents of half-savage nomads, there were but a
6

handful of political exiles and bands of ranging wolves
in those vast wastes. Still the Russian dreamed of ships
and ports and commerce and a seat at the council-boards
of Europe. He fortified Kronstadt, on the shores of the
Baltic, but as he looked from his stone casemates over
that inhospitable sea he saw it occupied by the navies
of his mightiest and most determined adversaries. He
turned southward to the shores of the Black Sea, and there
he crouched down for his long vigil of the Dardanelles.
The Dardanelles
In i8yo,when Europe was embroiled with the Franco-
Prussian war, in defiance of the mandate of the allies
of the Crimea, he re-fortified Sevastapol, and crept an
inch nearer his prey. In 1878 he saw his opportunity
to spring. It is difficult to determine what degree of
political hardship is tolerable, and how much oppres
sion free peoples can endure ; but since we must have
units of measurement and points of calculation we say
that Turkish rule in the Balkan Peninsula had become
intolerable. The faith of these mountain tribes was
identical with that of Russia, and their territories lay in
the direct path of his ambition. He declared himself
the sponsor of their religious rights. He mobilized his
army in two divisions. He crossed the historic Dan
ube. The left wing under Gourko was soon beyond the
Balkan Mountains, but before the right wing under
Skobeleff lay a country of Alpine difficulty, shrouded
in winter, and commanded by a rock-hewn fortress, the
consummate device of the engineer. Once and again
Skobeleff hurled his live battalions upon her impreg
nable sides. Great Plevna awoke in flame and thunder.
She smothered her ditches and choked her embrasures
with his quenched battalions. He sat down to the siege.
7

With steel, frost and starvation he throttled the life
out of her and turned toward the terrible Shipka Pass.
Every officer bound a phial of prussic acid upon his
wrist against the event of capture. One swift, savage
campaign in drifted snow and sleet and rain, one crush
ing blow upon the garrison nested there among the
rocks, and the reunited army rolled triumphantly down
upon helpless Adrianople. Treaty of Berltwj
Russia was within two days' march orthe goal of two
centuries of ambition, policy and intrigue. There he
paused to listen to the Turkish terms of surrender ;
there he remained, and thence he returned, stripped of
the achievements and rewards of that terrible winter
campaign at the instance of the Iron Chancellor of
Germany and by the hand of the premier - broker of
England, Benjamin Disraeli.
Secret Policy
A quarter of a century has elapsed since that diplo
matic spoliation. European statesmen again turned their
attention to the set screws and indicators of that mar
velous machine, the Balance of Power, but in their
moments of leisure they are haunted by conjectures
concerning the silent policy of thwarted Russia. They
hear that his agents have entered Armenia ; they have
descended the Euphrates as far as Bagdad ; they have
invited the oppressed subjects of Turkey to avail them
selves of the privilege of registry in the Russian con
sulates. What can be more evident than that the
aspirations of Russia are centred upon the Persian
Gulf and a railway through the Euphrates Valley?
Again, it is reported that his agents have gone east-
8

ward to Teheran ; they are negotiating loans, treaties,
alliances and railway concessions with the Shah in Shah.
Is it not evident that he still contemplates a secure
passage to the Persian Gulf and an outlet thence to
the sea ? Now again, it is certain that he has represen
tatives in Cabul at the court of the wily Ameer. British
agents report that he has spread a network of intrigue
among the hill tribes on the slopes of the Pamirs ; his
secret agents are sketching the precipices and defiles of
that awful cleft in the Himalayas, the Khyber Pass.
Could he force his way between those walls of rock,
Britain would be compelled to abandon the security of
her armored decks for the fortunes of a land campaign,
and fight her way against her own stone redoubts up
the slopes of the Himalayas and over the cornice of
the world. There, in the thoroughfare of the eagles,
prophetic statesmanship affirms that the Slav and Saxon
will settle the dispute of the ages and the traditional
feud of their races.
Stupendous Scheme and Final Triumph
But while statesmen and diplomatists conjectured and
dreamed, Russia has silently prepared a grand transfor
mation scene ; in a moment she has united these con
jectures into one stupendous policy and shot across the
breadth of Asia, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostock,
her threads of steel in the Siberian Railway. Subsequent
events have lent themselves to her enterprises. When
the Chino-Japanese war was concluded by the treaty of
Shimonoseki, Russia nullified the conquest of Japan and
seized the prize of that conflict when she demanded the
recession to herself of Port Arthur on the Yellow Sea.
While the allies thundered at the gates of Pekin, under
cover of the uproar she swept the valley of the Amur
9

with her troops, held Manchuria by military occu
pation and drew her railway lines southward from the
inhospitable Arctic Circle. In the treaty that followed
the capture of Pekin, it was Russia who took a lien upon
the autonomy of China and furnished the loan for the
indemnity demanded by the allies. Little by little, un
seen of the Powers, she has been transporting her troops
down the Amur, and she has now 200,000 within strik
ing distance of Port Arthur. The desert of Gobi, of
romantic geography, she has made a pasturage for three
millions of horses. She is freighting whole villages of
peasantry into the fertile valleys of Eastern Siberia.
Thus she brings her base of supplies forward to the
scene of possible hostilities. She has interior lines of
communication and defense. She holds China in her
control by financial obligation, and she has confirmed
her possession of Manchuria by definite treaties and
concessions. She has umpired the contest in the East,
and she holds the key to the open door.
Door Opened by Necessity and Ambition
It is, therefore, the domestic necessities of Europe,
the pressure of congested industries and of labor dis
tresses in Germany and the age-long ambitions of Russia
which have searched every sea on her borders, to find a
way to the ocean and to the benefits of commerce and
industry which have opened the doors of the East to
Western commerce. They are hard, necessitarian influ
ences and forces. They are not benevolent. They are
profoundly and unerringly selfish. There is no claim
of propagation of faith, nor of the dissemination of
culture. The difficulties of the Orient, the confusion
and the darkness of the East, have not been the grounds
of appeal in the hearts of Western statesmen. The lines

of commerce which concentrate upon the coast of Asia
are freighted with jealousies and hostilities, and con
tain in themselves the possibilities of future collision
and struggle. II. The Humanities Pause at the Door
jITH this review of the incidents and oc
casions of the western trend of commerce
1 and of the present revolution in civilization
! we are in a position to estimate what op-
_ portunities are presented for the higher
interests of humanity. Political forces in their operation
often bear so close an analogy to mechanical forces that
speakers and writers may be excused if in the discus
sion of social movements they sometimes mistake the
illustration for the fact, and discuss politics according
to mechanical principles. If the peace of Europe was
but the equilibrium of the Powers, shall we look for an
other, a humanitarian accommodation, when these same
interests and agents encounter one another on the oppo
site side of the world ?
Conference of the Hague
An incident fresh in our memory may serve to en
lighten our understanding of the situation. I said that
the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the
period of most rapid advancement of parliamentary in
stitutions and of the extension of popular suffrage ; it
was a period of peace, so general and continuous that
the matter-of-fact press grew optimistic, and it was pro
claimed with more than usual academic magniloquence
that " the brute arbitrament of war " was an anomaly
in an enlightened age. Novelists described with pre-
ii

cision the social order which was about to be established
with its exact industrial equities and infallible proced
ure, more sure, more exact and more constant than
any military rigor of enforcement could compel it to be.
If it was suggested that that marvelous social order
might be subjected to unforeseen misfortunes, we were
told there might be diseases in the body politic betimes,
but there would be also a social pathology ; and were
we not in possession, best of all, of the panacea for all
social ills, — general popular consent ? There were be
nevolent men who had forgotten that definition of civil
law which describes it as " a system of penalties," and
felt that the time was ripe to legislate a political millen
nium, " when the kindly earth shall slumber lapped in
universal law."
Purpose and Results
Pursuant to these high humanitarian aims, at the
instance and under the protection of the Czar of all the
Russias, late returned from the seizure of Port Arthur,
the Peace Conference of the Hague assembled May 1 8,
1899. Its principal object was the disarmament of Eu
rope, overburdened and sinking under the weight of
her military establishments. It proposed a convention
for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. It
reserved from consideration only those questions which
were actual causes of war among the represented powers,
and under the gracious patronage of his majesty, the
Czar of all the Russias, they were enabled to adjourn
to the indefinite future in perfect amity and with
mutual congratulations, and in full confidence that the
political millennium had been postponed. It was a splen
did vision. It was a splendid futility. It was a mag
nificent nullity. Let us hope that it will not always

remain but the dream of enthusiasts ! But it is our duty
to inquire concerning the influence it has exercised in
the present emergency, — what it has done to check the
present competition in the development of arms and in
the launching of battleships. Its policy of " peace on
earth " was answered immediately with sharp shot and
drowned in the clamors of imperial trade. Its unwise
provision that other explosives than those at that time
in use by the nations should be outlawed received
proper consideration by the adoption of maximite, and
explosive " D," on the part of our own government.
It has always been the weakness of the humanities
that they lack authority and range. They are ever tardy,
too tardy, when the Boer farmstead lies in ashes and
the farmer is turning into compost to glut a dead im
perialist promoter's vengeance; and Samaris too remote
from the lines of intelligence to benefit by the provi
sions of the conference at the Hague. When the order
of Herod is completed and all males over ten years of
age are to be shot, of what avail is a protest which can
not be heard in a neighboring cabinet, which cannot
command one political minister for its representation,
where the thrust and pressure of European industrial
necessities, ambitions and jealousies, and the demand
for fabulous mining and railroad concessions, concen
trate upon what we may now sadly call the Middle
Kingdom ?
Competition National and Militant
Travelling merchants and statesmen agree that the
basis of commercial success in the new Orient will be
found in commercial agencies — in acute, watchful, ener
getic and ingenious agents, who shall exploit the foreign
market for our unfamiliar commodities, who will keep
13

the home offices informed as to the nature of the foreign
demand. The agent must be at once superintendent,
diplomat and salesman. The competition is not that of
firms and corporations, but it is the contest of indus
trial nationalities. The treaties have not yet said it, but
we know that China is commercially partitioned, and
the political partition waits upon further commercial
necessities. The spheres of influence are already delim
ited ; capital has already been invested and is patiently
awaiting returns. It is contended that the one effective
advertisement of these national industrial corporations
is to be found in the flags, battleships and garrisons
which are established in Asia.
The Orient is full of passive Confucian maxims ; it
is persuadable only by manifest power. Force and com
mercial prestige are wedded in the East. Humanitarian
motives, important as they are, are not readily imbedded
in treaties and are only incidentally applied in transac
tions. Trading companies and foreign offices are noto
riously reticent about the conduct of their affairs in
barbarous parts. They regard investigation as inquisi
tion, and a foreign secretary looks upon inquiry as little
less than burglary. Under such conditions the pursuit
of humanity becomes the most difficult and dangerous
business with which civilization can concern itself. The
refinement and benevolence which cannot take form and
being in a settled organization, which cannot command
representatives on the field where it exercises its benefi
cent functions, may devise, engross and publish amiable
manifestoes annually; but it is sowing feathers against the
north wind when it undertakes to counsel the headstrong
nations driven forward by internal ambitions and indus
trial necessities. Before the eruption of Mt. Pelee a
board of scientists reassured the people of St. Pierre.
¦4

Amenities of Trade
We must admit, however, that trade itself carries
with it certain limitations of its own severities and op
pressions ; a Belgian occupation, with its mutilations
and massacres of natives, exterminates the rude patron
and destroys its own market. Civil institutions them
selves are not readily exchanged by peoples; and Japan,
though recognized as a civilized nation, is not an edi
fying example of the worth of parliamentary institutions
when applied in the Orient. But her aptitude for
industry, and her capacity to supply her own wants and
provide the minor appliances of a new civilization, have
been amply demonstrated to the disappointment of
Western capitalists and manufacturers.
China as a Competitor
China, with its four hundred millions of people, is
now the supreme prize of the commercialized nations.
It is trade itself which will demand the preservation of
the Mongol race, and further advance can be made
only by the prosperity of these barbarous patrons. But
when the dexterous and patient fingers of the Chinaman
have acquired the arts of the Western manufacturer,
there will be a rapid decline in the demand for the
more common conveniences and necessaries of civiliza
tion. The display of ships, cannon and regiments does
impress the oriental mind. The battles of the Yalu, of
Tientsin, Pekin and the Amur have given him food
for reflection. He has found suggestion in the fact that
the immense resources of Britain are scarcely equal to
the pacification of the Transvaal, and he now knows
that the partition of the "Flowery Kingdom" will stand,
just so long as he is unskilled in the use and manufac-
15

ture of arms. He is already importing military equip
ment from Germany, and he has put his armies under
the tutelage of Russian officers. The fanatical Boxer
uprising is the first stirring of a national consciousness
in the Mongol races. The transformation of the Chi
nese people into a single nationality is a question not
of centuries but of decades. The great red dragon
awakens from his sleep, and the drug of Confucian pro
priety and precedent has lost its power. He will man
ufacture his own guns and he will man his own forts
and navies. We have been at great trouble and expense
to open the way to his markets ; we have smashed in
his gates with the butts of our rifles, that we may make
way for trade; but we need to consider that we have also
furnished another outlet for his activities, and opened
the way for his industrial competition. He has worked
for generations for wages which would pauperize the
meanest European; the kind of labor he performs would
be a penal sentence to the man of the West. When in
his patience and aptness he has mastered foundry and
engine and loom and lathe, there may be a different
estimate of the wisdom of the Western nations when
they opened up China to civilization and trade.
Bankruptcy and Military Occupation
Bankruptcy is an infallible check upon the excesses
of a military occupation. The subjugated population
must be won over to patronage. We cannot force
commodities down the throats of consumers, and sol
diers cannot catch the misguided heathen and clothe
his nakedness with the products of Manchester and
Fall River. After the struggle of contending interests,
passions must be subdued in order that the tastes and
needs of the unwilling patron may be discovered and
16

supplied. The censored dispatches of the Foreign
Office must give way to the full and free communication
of the telegraph and post. When we hunted the heathen
as an enemy we remembered all his cunning, cruelty
and perversity ; when he is sought as a patron he is
examined for kindlier qualities. Trade rebuilds his
house out of the wreckage of war. Mutual understand
ing discloses the two hemispheres to each other and
mutual offices bind them together. It is evident, there
fore, that trade itself, which was the inspiration of deter
mined international competition, brings also influences
which make for peace, and some means of material and
intellectual advancement for these exploited populations
of Asia. Eastern Morals
But has the East no moral motives, no instinct of
gratitude, to which fair and just measures may appeal?
The chasm which divides the material interests of the
East and West is insignificant beside the abyss which
separates the minds of the two hemispheres. The
Western traveller stands abashed before the civilities
and refined courtesies of the Oriental. In his' manners
he displays a genius like that of the Greek artist ; his
deportment is the Parthenon of his wisdom and devo
tion. Manners in his world have become morals, and
morals, in turn, but a form of deportment. Things
take precedence of men, and his correct speech touches
each natural object with a little glow of reverence. He
prepares for you " the honorable tea." He will have a
sword for his revenges, but the armorer does not ven
ture to draw the steel- or to anneal the blade until he
has prepared himself by cleansing formalities and much
searching of heart. In trade or society you may mulct
17

him if you can, but you must be careful " to save his
face." A verbal affront may drive him to desperation,
and he may signalize your cruelty and bad manners
and make reprisal upon you by ceremoniously disem
bowelling himself. His philosophy of life in our eyes is
one of complete inversion. He will have it that your
horny monsters, with their breath of flame and voice of
thunder, with which you blockade his ports and batter
down his fortresses, are airy nothings but the fancies of
a sick dream. He appreciates justice, mercy and gener
osity, for have they not been approved from the time
of the Ming dynasty ? It is, therefore, worth the while
of the United States to be generous ; but in the mean
while it is the part of prudence and philosophy to
accept the good offices of Russia, and it is clearly expe
dient to continue to trade with Germany. This sub
stitution of manners for morals and of the importance
of things for the regard due to men is the direct result
of idolatry and nature worship ; it is part of the doctrine
which underlies polytheism, which the Eastern sages
finally abstracted and enjoined in their maxims and pre
cepts. It is of the first importance to the Christian
theologian to remember that the agnostic rich man in
the parable is Chinese as well as Jew, and that he
walked in all the precepts of Confucius, blamelessly,
until " in Hades he lifted up his eyes."
Stern Reality
This prison fortress of the oriental mind is the struct
ure of the ages ; it was founded in the divine dishonor ;
its walls are thick and strong with immemorial super
stitions ; it is barred and doubly barred with traditional
customs and precepts. The priests and sages of the
East have used the key of knowledge to lock them-
18

selves and their followers away from the light, and they
have thrown the key out of the window. Here and
there, the missionary, by almost secret arts, has accom
plished a jail delivery of a handful of souls ; but now
the whole tremendous enginery of the impatient and
ambitious West has been turned upon that strong
hold of arrogance and folly, and France answers back
to Russia, and Germany invokes the aid of Belgium,
and the cry goes up : " Raze it, raze it to the ground ! "
Oriental Thought
It is now half a century since Bppp, Humboldt,
Grimm and other pioneers in philology opened to the
world the great body of mystical oriental literature.
Oriental letters, philosophy and religion were more
particularly examined by the learning of the West. An
enthusiastic unbelief hailed the opportunity to institute
a comparison of religions, and discovered that sacred
canons, sectaries and heretics were the usual order in
all civilizations. The religious teachings and presump
tions of the Bible, it was alleged, were traced to their
original source in Mazdeism, Buddhism and Brahmin-
ism. The cross was discovered in Asia and Mexico,
and Christianity was ready to stand abashed at its igno
rance concerning the origin of its most important con
victions. But now, with agents and schools in every
country under the sun, with teachers and pupils, masters
of the literatures of the East and West, " the judgment
is set and the books are open," and right now the
question is pressed home upon the charlatan scholar
ship of a past generation, Why were you so confident
that Mazdeism was the source of Hebrew teachings, in
divinity and morals, and that biblical doctrines of
angels had Persia for their source ? Also, wherein does
!9

the Dahrmapada rival the Sermon on the Mount, or the
ethics of Confucius compare with the precepts of the
New Testament? Moreover, what is the excellence of
thephilosophy of the much-extolled Upanishads? How
does that philosophic system justify the claim of the
supreme subtlety of the Hindu mind ? And what is
the import and the " light and leading" of that primary
maxim, that supreme precept and key of all mystery of
Brahmin theology, " Let a man meditate on the syl
lable Om " ? Now, the whole thought of the East,
when it is not brutally idolatrous, is agnostic. The pan
theism which it confesses is but the thin mist which
arrests the eye of fancy, while it veils the abyss of the
unknown and undefined. The abiding hope of tired
Asia is extinction. For this mortal disease of the mind,
can the East look to the West for a cure ? Is it not a
question if the West itself can furnish foundations for
its own thought?
Western Education
The business centre of Chicago stands as a monu
ment to the skill of our engineers. Those towering
buildings rest on a mass of unsounded marl. It was a
hazardous undertaking to erect on such a stratum the
skyscrapers of the great Western metropolis. But the
piles were driven into the viscid blue mass, railroad
irons were criss-crossed upon the piles, and the whole
body of metal was united and petrified with Portland
cement into a pontoon. Nervous people still watch to
see if the buildings are settling or if the streets are rising.
I suppose our educational enterprises lose nothing by
comparison with these ambitious business buildings.
Old universities are being enlarged and new institutions
are created as by divine fiat, yet our educational insti-
20

tutions must justify their worth and service to the world
on other grounds than their visible or financial magni
tude. They will be judged by their service in the world
of thought, and not by their endowments and depart
ments of knowledge. What can they say with regard to
those hopes and fears by which men vindicate their own
importance and reckon their destiny ? What remedy
have they to offer to the discouraged, agnostic East?
There men investigate all things by introspection ; dis
covery is made by meditation alone, and rapture and
hallucination are verification.
Agnosticism and Pantheism
The thought of the West, on the other hand, is def
inite, ordered and methodical, and must be put to the
test of reality. What, then, has the professor to offer
for the cure of the hallucinations of the sages ? If the
drift of discussion is reflected in many a portly volume
and laborious disquisition, we know the present mood
of the schools and can determine their value in the
world of oriental thought. Western science, we are
told, insists that " there is no certainty in knowledge ;
that truth is but our valuation of an inscrutable world,
whether it be truth revealed from heaven or educed
from the face of nature." " Even so," says the sage ;
" I agree to the finding : all things we behold are but
Maya," that is, illusion. The West suspects that all
things, mind and matter, forms and forces, are of one
essence, and the East proceeds to affirm that they are
one, and that that one is all. The West declares that
the heart must rest with the imminence of the Absolute
if there be a God ; and the East replies, " This con
sciousness of mine will presently be imminent in that
Absolute and be at rest in the All." If, then, the pres-
21

ent mode of Western thought is decisive of the origin
and end of knowledge, the East can find only confir
mation of its belief; and our establishments sooner or
later must sink and stifle in the nether marl of agnos
ticism. Christian Transcendentalism
Whatever be the final word of learning, East or West,
although it be decided that the philosopher's imperfect
examination of the apparatus of knowledge but shows
its inadequacy to discover truth, if nature itself be de
nounced as an insufficient husk for any permanent
principle which deserves that sacred name, your repre
sentative who proclaims a revelation from heaven is
unabashed by the course of speculation as he preaches
a God, transcendent, loving and free. For him the
right arm of Omnipotence is unshackled by the loose
robe of the visible order of things. The divine nature
is not linked to matter with the rigidity of brace and
strut and span. The alleged play of automatic force
does not decide the issue whether there is a mind in
the universe, neither does it reflect back upon the
divine nature its automatic likeness. He confidently
affirms, because history is not a rubble of incidents
which cannot support the weight of supernatural fact.
He protests he knows, not because of the sufficiency
of his faculty of knowledge, but because of the down-
reach of divine grace and the assurance of an inward,
abiding spirit of God. This new maelstrom in the Yel
low Sea, which rocks the world with its rotation, and
drags by suction the navies, enterprises, opinions and
resources of the age to collide in its inner circles, is not
a misfortune to the faith we proclaim, nor the place of
destruction for the cause of Jesus Christ; and your
22

agents will have larger influence in the future of the
world's civilization and higher responsibility in the re
habilitation of Asia.

III. The Church is Within the Door
Secular Importance of the Missionary
JHE revelation of the Orient is the oppor
tunity of the missionary. Hitherto he has
been fitfully revealed by the accident of
important events or had in memory by
| religious conventicles alone. He, too,
comes into the range of secular vision. His seclusion is
at an end. What he is, what he does and what he knows
will be a matter of solicitude as he turns the eyes of the
conscience of Christianity upon the practices and trans
actions about him. He may not desire it, but he is the
accredited censor of foreign residents and policies. He
is the witness of the West in the heart of the East. He
cannot hide himself if he would. He stands in the full
blaze of publicity for criticism or approval. His office
of mediation between the East and West is immensely
enlarged. He is at a railway terminus and in reach of
the telegraph. His stores of information will be de
manded in every political difficulty and in every emer
gency and abuse of trade, and he cannot withhold his
knowledge. Where these alien civilizations collide he
is a buffer between; where they coalesce he is a censor
of the result. He must testify at the council board of
the Powers, and his information will be indispensable
to statesmen. He is, henceforth, a part of the world's
bureau of intelligence. 23

The Discipline of the Church
The Bible was written to the Church. The object of
missions is the discipline of the churches. It is the
difficulties of business which evoke skill and lend ro
mance to success. The sickroom is the source and
test of practical, that is, of real sympathy. Without
pain and disaster the race would become as unsympa
thetic as cattle. The discipline of sorrow is the founda
tion of love and spiritual aspiration. Rudyard Kipling
tells how an insubordinate black-Irish regiment was
reformed. Their chief residence was the guardhouse,
their usual avocation the severer and menial tasks of
the camp. According to traditional British usage and
all the probabilities of the case, a toy officer, a super
fluous younger son, was sent out from England to
command this rabble of rowdies. But, contrary to prob
ability, he was a youth who had judgment and a military
ambition. When he was presented to the regiment,
they resolved unanimously and with singleness of heart
that they could and would do something in their feeble
way to broaden his mind, if they could not increase his
stature. He was young ; he had not wept ; now it was
their evident duty to provide him with the opportunity
to complete the tale of his tears. Pleasantly and even
arduously they consecrated themselves to this mission.
The regiment had now an object in life. He, in turn,
surveyed the regiment, and declared that it was the
worst mob of unlicked ruffians in the British army. It
struck him that good, hard campaigning was the proper
remedy for their exuberant spirits. He obtained leave
to take them into the hills, where he could provide
more duty and less drink. He took a full supply of
bats and racquets, and was careful to include in his
24

requisition an ample equipment of boxing gloves. He
determined that every altercation was not to be the
excuse for a Donnybrook fair. They must settle their
little differences according to the rules and regulations
which a strenuous civilization specifies and provides.
Then he bullied them, he entertained their muscles.
He worked them in season and out of season. He ran
sacked the tactics to find things for them to do. He
intimated to them that if they and he came back alive
they would be the crack regiment of the empire. He
drilled them like the chorus for a May festival, and
when they marched back upon the parade ground they
manoeuvred like a flight of autumn birds, with the align
ment of print. Henceforth no man looked askance at
their miniature officer, on peril of disfigurement and
interrupted health. They believed that he would com
mand the army, and they almost looked for his name
in the litany.
The Church militant shows the evils of barrack life.
Christians have little zest in tactics andx campaigns.
They are glad to off with their accoutrements and into
civilian dress. Creeds shorten, coalesce and are dissi
pated in doubt and denial. We have a ready ear for
every mutinous talker. We have time to kill. Would
you rouse us to action, question our amusements. But
the day that is coming will call for the latent loyalty
of the Church. The enterprises which concentrate upon
the Open Door carry with them the interest and atten
tion of civilization. Travel follows trade. We shall see
the temples with their carved obscenities. We must
witness the inhuman orgies of dedication and celebration
which have been long reported and feebly realized. We
shall discover that we cannot stop the influence of hea
thenism with the cork of our moral disapprobation. The
25

protection of our own institutions and culture will
demand sanitary measures in the breeding places of the
plague. We shall learn that the wisdom of the East is
folly, and the precepts of the sages are a matured apol
ogy for vice and indifference. Whatever the pending
revolution may accomplish or destroy, it is certain to
precipitate the supreme mental, moral and spiritual
conflict of history in this intimacy of the East and West.
The Church will not have the opportunity to drill; she
must go at once into the fight.
Illustration of the Faith
Christianity is prone to cherish and exalt its memo
rials. It is subject to the tendency of all great and worthy
movements to dwell upon past triumphs and to
memorialize former greatness. An imposing formula
or monument will impress the imagination and appeal
to the sensibilities long after the conviction which it
celebrates has spent its force. Whitewashing the tombs
of the prophets may indicate a certain sympathy with
their aims if it does not lead us to fulfil their precepts.
True, the arts of architecture and decoration have been
much advanced beyond the earlier and simpler modes
of commemoration. We may not entertain the religious
views of those who designed the cathedrals, but we have
skill equal to theirs and we can command Episcopal
ingenuity to discover and expound new uses for our
antiquated structures when they have been erected.
One of the momentous controversies which embroils
the world of learning at the present time concerns the
exact location of the sepulchre of our Lord. But the
choice is ever present to us whether we will be content
to embellish the past or meet the emergencies of the
present. A living faith has a better vocation than the
26

construction of the casings and caskets of piety. The
true and inspiring memorial is a personal fulfillment of
the precept. Communion with a living Lord is not so
close or ardent in cloistered meditation as in the mo
ment of personal sacrifice. The letter of the faith needs
living illustration. Jesus Christ is most vividly recalled
where we imitate his deeds and sacrifices. One sur
rendered life is better than miles of groined arches.
Each age must furnish its own illustration of his pres
ence. One such illustration is probably fresh in the
memory of many who are here today. The story was
told by one of the participants in the crime. In an
interior town, the sudden Boxer uprising surprised the
missionary and his two little boys in their dwelling. It
was proposed to burn the building over them. It would
be the spectacle of a lifetime to watch their panic and
agonies through the windows. But the spectacle was a
disappointment. There were no pleadings, nor outcries,
nor wringing of helpless hands, nor frantic plunges at
door or window. Only the grave, pale man took a soft,
childish palm in either of his own, and as the smoke
thickened they walked up and down, up and down,
while he talked to them. The smoke was shot with
flame, still they walked, and still he talked. Great
orange and amber sheets and volumes rolled toward
them in roaring scrolls. Still they walked, and still he
talked. There was a tidal sweep of fire ; they staggered,
they tottered, and they fell, involved in enfolding dra
peries of flame. This man belonged to what a discrim
inating writer has termed the uncultured peasant class,
from which, he affirms, the missionaries are recruited.
He may have been homely and undersized. Doubt
less he had mannerisms. He did not have the dignity
of figure or the sublime pose of a Washington or a
27

Webster. Yet there is a certain glory which pierces the
rude husk of him as he moves, unflinchingly, up that
corridor of flame into the arms of his Master. And you,
little ones, with faces childish sweet and angel bright,
with your soft, trusting palms and hearkening ears ;
you, with wide eyes of wonder, who see through the
casements the faces leering and laughing ; you are on
your last journey out of a world unfriendly alike to
righteousness and innocence ; you who still hold on
and bravely listen while every nerve turns a thread of
fire, where are you today ? Where can you be ? Where
will the great Christ have you, but where in shrill
treble you have sung :
" Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on his gentle breast."
The memorials of the living God are not built of
rough ashlar without and polished marbles within. The
example and inspiration of faith is by personal sur
render, and is communicated from man to man across
the world. Calvary remains, not because it is a hill, but
because the Spirit of the Son of God abides with men.
I fear the progress of the gospel is not yet insured
against persecutions and atrocities. The way of sor
rows abides. Your representatives are within easy reach
of mobs, mandarins and sultans. They represent no
political power, and they are too often regarded as a
source of unnecessary disturbance and a hindrance to
trade. Their converts are attainted in the eyes of their
countrymen with foreign sympathies and customs. The
protection of natives by foreign powers is a delicate and
perplexing question of diplomacy and a -fertile source
of misunderstanding. The representatives of state re
ligions cannot away with the heresy of your personal,
voluntary principles. I am sure that the present crisis
28

of trade and politics will not pass without the usual
testimony of pain. I am also sure that it will be a
chastened and purified church which issues from the
ordeal, and I know that the Shepherd and Bishop of our
souls will maintain his righteous cause.
World-wide Civilization and Culture
It is the last great revolution of civilization which I
have so imperfectly considered. There are no more seas
to exploit and no more continents to find. The paths
of enlightenment are open to all the world. Art,
thought, culture and religion shall roll unhindered
right round the globe. What was the passing incident
of German politics and the rashness of an unadvised
youth, the fall of the Iron Chancellor, has become the
pivotal incident of the twentieth century; what was the
ambition and policy of the Slav has dictated the course
of action for a continent; what was an industrial neces
sity has set in motion all the political energies of the
globe; and the rivalries and burdens of Europe have been
transported half round the world. Culture and refine
ment henceforth have a universal platform. Whether
righteousness and honor can survive in the world is
now to be put to the proof. If agnosticism can build
and maintain states and preserve virtue by sheer force
of usage will be demonstrated. Whether a world balance
of power and a legislated millennium can be established
will be ascertained. Is it to be universal peace or is it
to be an Armageddon conflict? Only the event can de
cide, but certain it is that storm and stress are not yet
laid forever. Moral Suasion
I, too, believe that the day will come which will re
lieve all sorrows and bring in everlasting righteousness.
29

Over our belching chimneys and quaking forges a gray
morning will dawn and point its early pallor with
gleams of the footprints of a returning Lord. But until
then how shall we project into that crater of commer
cial passions and necessitarian politics the finer aims
and the spiritual aspirations of the Western world?
Why, when the elemental passions of mankind are un
leashed we will sit in solemn conclave and legislate a
millennium. We will make a tompion of our carefully
drafted manifestoes of peace and stuff the muzzles of
breach-loading war. We will set afloat from our sunny
nook of Western order our far -spun sentiments and
ensnare and arrest your armor-plated monsters on
their errands of destruction. With an educational mast
and tackle, grounded in no conviction, we will lift the
inert life of the indifferent, despairing East. We will
thrust in our delicate, live sensibilities where cogs are
meshing, connecting rods flying, and cross-heads plung
ing, and all is steel and momentum, and bring to a pause
the weight and mass and energy of a civilization in
spired by necessity and rushing on with pitiless, mechani
cal force. We will catch the crank at half-swing with
bare hands ; we will grasp the piston-rod in mid-plunge ;
we will seize the invisible spokes of the master-wheel
of international politics, with its accumulated momen
tum of industry, ambition, jealousies and greed, and
check it by sheer personal power and determination.
This encounter of the East and West is not a mere
incident in the continuous course of human affairs, nor
the accident of a nation or a race. It is a collision of
planets. It involves thought and habit, old tradition
and present motives, ancient privilege and future posi
tion. Come, then, let us get together and advise the
gulf stream and censure Vesuvius. 3°

A Divine Mediation
Again the Church is called to the task of mediation.
Your representatives are within the Open Door. Their
seclusion is past. They are lifted on the high platform
of Eastern politics and commerce. They are the eyes
of the West in the heart of the East; they are the con
science of civilization in the corruption of paganism.
They are there not because finer sentiments are out
raged by the oppressions of heathenism but by virtue
of a divine compulsion. The humane sentiments which
are ventilated and evaporated in conventions and for
midable treaties must find opportunity in the ministry
of the missionaries or be condemned as the vaporings
of impractical enthusiasts who seek an advertisement of
their own refinement. The missionary is then the minis
ter to misfortune, the advocate of the weak, the media
tor of the covenant of eternal life. He shall plead the
cause of the native Christian against a pagan society,
of the pagan himself against a ruthless commercialism,
of the whole great, despairing East against the mighty
and dominant West. It is his to proclaim, and to illus
trate the faith of the Son of God. Once and again he
shall be crushed by the contending forces of empire,
but not in vain shall he trust an order and policy, for
mulated in no earthly cabinet and directed by no earthly
ruler. We know that there is another sway which rules
the issues of the nations. It was not Russia nor Ger
many that opened the door. Your agent shall not
appeal to them, nor to any earthly potentate. He is
under the protection of the King of kings.
" And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own."
31

Persistence of the Gospel
The vision of the seer is ours, " And I saw a strong
eagle flying in the midst of heaven, having the ever
lasting gospel to preach unto the nations." Not every
bird can be abroad in the storm. When the great Sep
tember gales sweep our coast pale flights of sea birds,
rovers of the wind, are beaten out to sea. They rise
and for a moment saber the blast with swift strokes,
then with shrill cries turn and are swept away. But the
great sea eagle spreads his huge vans to the storm and
sets his bold breast against its rush. He takes its force
beneath his feathers and is lifted. He sees the thick
woof of hastening cloud and plunges into it. He shakes
the tempest from his wings with shrill mockery in the
upper sky. Then flattening his pinions he slides, at
ease, brave bird, back over the turmoil to his old cliff,
which is unmoved by any uproar, and to his fastness,
where there is refuge in any gale.