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29 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
Our interest in China was first aroused by a letter from an old school-fellow, Arthur Polhill, who, with heroic self-denial, has spent the best part of his life in China as a missionary. Subsequently I joined the China Emergency Committee, who in 1907 invited us to go out to the Shanghai Centenary Conference. That visit led naturally to a tour in China, Korea, and Japan. When we returned we found that great interest was being felt at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the movement in th
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
For centuries China has been the land that never moved. It had a political history full of wars and bloodshed, of intrigue and murder; periods of prosperity and enlightenment; periods of darkness and desolation; but the country remained essentially the same country. There might be some small alteration in its customs, but China was distinctly unprogressive. And everybody who knew China ten or fifteen years ago was prepared to prophesy that it would continue to remain unprogressive. Many a missio
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
The day is past when any one in Europe, whether Christian or non-Christian, can be indifferent to what is happening in China. The Christian has indeed been for a long time alive to the importance of these developments, but the ordinary citizen with no strong religious views has usually neither displayed nor felt any interest in a country separated from us by so many miles and by such an untraversable gulf in thought and language. If the Christian has urged the importance of Chinese missions, his
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The West cannot either by right or through self-interest ignore the problem that China has to solve. From being the most conservative country in the world, she has become a country in which there is rapid change. The whole civilisation of this vast country of 400,000,000 is becoming fundamentally altered by the importation into it of ideas and thoughts which are not native to her, and which have been created by a system of religion and by a history belonging to nations very different to herself.
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
It is impossible to study any Chinese question and ignore the relations of China with foreign powers. They are always curious and generally unique. Certainly any one who goes to China for the purpose of studying the mission question cannot but be struck at the extraordinary treaty rights possessed by missionaries. In most countries the teacher of religion has no peculiar rights. He is, alas! more often bullied than favoured by the modern State, even if that State should profess itself well incli
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
I do not suppose that we can have any conception of the amount of suffering which goes on at the present time in China. The first time we were in China I had the honour of meeting a Mr. Ede, who had just returned from distributing food in a famine-stricken district, and his description was truly terrible; the young men had walked away and found work in other districts, but the old people and the children had to remain. What had caused the famine in this case was characteristic of unreformed Chin
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
It would give a very false idea of the Chinese if great stress were not laid on the good side of their civilisation. They have many fine qualities, and in more than one point they are superior to the nominal Christianity of some Western countries. The first thing perhaps that strikes a foreigner when he is brought into contact with the Chinese is their great courtesy; their literati are such gentlefolk. Even the less cultured people have most refined manners; no one is ever rude; and one of the
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The rivers and railways of China form a very marked contrast. The rivers represent the old means of communication, the railways the new, and the comparison between the river and the railway enables the traveller to compare new with old China and to realise the great changes that are taking place there and the transitional character of the phase through which the country is now passing. Ancient China, as compared to ancient Europe, was a most progressive country, a very essential point to remembe
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Nowhere is the transitional period through which China is passing more obvious than in the cities of China; many towns are still completely Chinese, but as you approach the ports you find more and more Western development. The contrast between towns is extremely marked. Shanghai or Tientsin are Western towns and centres of civilisation; the difference between them and such towns as Hangchow or Ichang is very great. The true Chinese city is not without its beauty—in fact, in many ways it is a bea
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
There was one marked difference in the cities of China as we saw them in our two visits, and this was the change that had taken place in the matter of opium-smoking. Opium-smoking in 1907 was such a common vice that you could see men smoking it at the doors of their houses. In 1909 opium-smoking hid itself, and those that smoked, smoked secretly, or at any rate less ostentatiously. I doubt whether so great an alteration has taken place in any country, certainly not of late years. Each race has i
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The desire for radical change is never so much to be dreaded as when it attacks the home life of a nation. That quiet life so often hidden away because of its very sacredness by the Eastern races is like everything else in China disturbed by the introduction of Western civilisation, and in no other part of human life will its two different sides be more apparent. Western civilisation without Christianity will destroy the home life as it destroys most Eastern things it touches, and will do little
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
Among the many ways a nation has of expressing its thoughts and of showing its individuality, none is more valuable to mankind in general than its art. Perhaps it can be said that every civilised nation has contributed to the common stock of art, and certainly China has done her share. The porcelain which is called after her name testifies to her pre-eminence in ceramic art, and should make Westerns cautious in expressing their contempt for a race which is generally acknowledged to be the origin
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
The real power of a race lies in its religion; other motives inevitably tend to egotism, disorganisation, and national death, and China is no exception to the rule; the strength and the weakness of China lies in her religion and in its absence. There are few nations who set less store by the outward observance of religion and yet there are few nations with a greater belief in the supernatural. On the one hand, the temples are deserted or turned into schools, and the Chinese are believed to have
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
It is not realised in the West how much the modern movement in Japan owes its power and vitality to a native movement which welcomed change. In Japan Buddhism had failed, the one school of Confucianism which believed in change was dominant, and therefore it was a comparatively easy matter to introduce the extensive changes of Western civilisation. There was no religion with roots deeply entwined in the hearts of the people to oppose such a change. Shintoism had not yet been rediscovered and esta
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
The best view of the religion of China is to be obtained from the enlightened Chinese themselves, and their views will probably be of interest to our readers. It should be explained that one of the objects of our second visit to China was to inquire whether the Chinese officials would welcome the foundation of Universities in which Western knowledge could be taught, and whose atmosphere should be Christian. When the matter was first discussed in England it crept into the newspapers, and I immedi
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
It is only just to put in the forefront of the influences that are Christianising and changing China the French, Italian, and other missions of the Roman Catholic Communion. Our first contact with the wonderful work which these missions are accomplishing was in French China, at that very interesting but most pestilential locality, Saigon. We were received with the greatest kindness by the Sous-Gouverneur at the French Government House, a palatial residence worthy rather of an emperor than a gove
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
Though the Roman Catholic missions were first in the field by several centuries, it must not be supposed that they are now the only Christian influence at work. The work of other bodies is extensive and very important. The pioneer society was the London Mission, which began work under Dr. Morrison in 1807. Very soon after them the British and Foreign Bible Society began work in 1812. But no great mission work was undertaken till after the treaty of 1842. Then society after society sprang up. One
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Among the influences that have awakened China, outside the great lesson of political events, none has been more influential than literature in its many branches. The Chinese have always been a literary race. They invented printing about the same time that the savage Saxons welcomed the first book written by the Venerable Bede, and the influence of literature has therefore held sway many hundred years in China. But for the last six hundred years there have not been many works of original thought
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
After literature perhaps we should place medical missions as one of the most effective ways of placing before the Chinese the difference between our civilisations and of showing them the truth and beauty of Christianity. There are three or possibly four reasons why medical missions are a right and effective way of conducting the Christian propaganda. First, they are an object-lesson of the love which Christianity inculcates. In school teaching we find that the object-lesson is the most efficient
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
One of the movements which will affect Christianity all over the East has had its origin in Korea. Just as the suffering and miserable heart of the individual man is that which Christianity finds most suitable for its home, so it is with a nation. It is at the moment of national adversity and humiliation that religious movements most readily rise. Korea had looked upon herself as the equal of Japan. From Korea came much of the civilisation which adorned Japan before the great Western movement. W
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
At the great Shanghai Conference we always spoke of the "Church in China," implying thereby that there was to be one Christian body in the Chinese empire. This ideal is lofty and not impossible. There is a reasonable expectation that the great intellectual movement in China will render the Chinese very ready to accept new ideas, and the rate of conversion in China gives one reasonable hope that the new ideas may be Christian and not those of Western materialism. If China becomes Christian there
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
I have before had occasion to refer to the great influence education has had on the awakening of China, and I think the Americans can fairly claim to have been the greatest workers in this field. The Roman Catholics have from time immemorial been most careful to train children in Christian truth, and they have wonderful institutions for this purpose. In 1852 the Jesuits founded the College of St. Ignatius for the education of native priests, and since that day they have founded many educational
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
One of the highest testimonials to the wisdom of the missionaries in inaugurating an educational policy has been given by the Chinese Government. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, and missionary education has its imitator in no less a body than the Chinese Government. The Chinese have always loved education, but the education they admired was the literary education which had for its commencement the Chinese character and for its end the Chinese Classics; their system of teaching was different
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
Any one who has read the preceding account of the intentions of the Chinese Government might be pardoned if he supposed that after four or five years those intentions had borne fruit in an efficient system of public education. But one who has resided any time in China would only smile at the suggestion that there should be an intimate relation between what the Chinese Government professes to do and what the Chinese Government does. A Manchu Professor whose European education had enabled him to a
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
The difficulties in the way of education differ in Government schools and in Mission schools. If the Chinese Government could unite the Government schools to the Mission schools, they would overcome all these difficulties, and they would have a most perfect system of Western education. Of all the difficulties lying in the way of Government schools, first and foremost is the fundamental weakness of China, that weakness which is endangering her national existence, a weakness which I fear she will
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
The great danger that threatens mission schools, a danger which is increasing every year, is that the best pupils of these schools have to go to Universities in search of Western knowledge where they are exposed to the insidious attacks of Western materialism. The teachers have at present no alternative; they have to send the best and brightest of their pupils somewhere to complete their education. It would be unfair on a boy to refuse to send him on, and if he is to receive a higher education,
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
The Committees at Oxford and Cambridge had not been without hope that the missionary world would accept the scheme readily once it was well understood. They had had the advantage of many interviews with missionaries and others in London at their joint meetings so as to make it a matter of some certainty that a large portion of the Western educators of China would agree with them. But they were rather doubtful whether the scheme would be welcomed by the Chinese official world. The commercial worl
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
One word in conclusion. I have tried to show the greatness of the crisis that is before us. The civilisation which has long been worn by the white man alone is now being donned by the yellow man, not as the result only of missionary effort, but as the result of those great world causes over which puny mankind has no control; and I have tried to show that all that we can do is to recognise and frankly accept this great fact, namely, that the members of the human race who are subject to and govern
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APPENDIX
APPENDIX
When it was settled that we should go to China to see what opportunities there were there for an educational mission emanating from our English Universities, we decided to go viâ Siberia, and stop at St. Petersburg and also at Irkutsk on the way. I had previously found the journey of fifteen days without a break exhausting to myself and still more so to my wife who accompanied me. The plan had also the advantage that it gave me an opportunity of trying to find out why the great Russian Church ha
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