CHAPTER XII.

_OUR MISSIONARIES._

European Prejudice.--French Fathers.--Italian Sisters.--Prize-giving.--Anti-Christian Tracts.--Chinese Saints and Martyrs.

People can hardly fairly discuss the question of missionaries without deciding definitely first of all whether they wish the Chinese to become Christians or not. And as I do not know what may be the views of those who read this book, I think I had better here cite impressions as to the prejudice against them, written after I had only spent a few years in the East; for the prejudice against missionaries is really one of the most amusing things in China.

"They all hang about Chefoo. That is the sort of place that suits them. A nice comfortable house, and nothing to do! Just about suit me too! I'd like to find a merchant's clerk who did as little as one of these _self-devoted_ men, who have given up everything," is a little speech I heard one man make to three others one day, apparently expressing the sentiments and experience of all. Yet take Chefoo, the very place thus pointed out, and what do you find there? There is not a Shanghai man who knows him who does not say: "Oh, Dr. Nevius! Oh! but he's quite an exceptional man. He does more good than all the others put together, I believe. You don't fancy other missionaries are like him?" Or, "Oh, Dr. Williamson! Oh! but that's a man quite unlike the common," or, as I heard another day, "That's a man one really likes to hear talk about religion."

It is just the same, if you go up Hankow way. "Mr. Barber! Ah! but he is a thorough gentleman! A University man! Seventeenth Wrangler, you know, and a splendid all-round man--good at cricket, and football, and everything." "Mr. Hill! You won't meet another man like him in a hurry. Why, he is a man of independent means; doesn't draw a penny from the Mission. There is hardly a good cause all over the world which that man does not give to. He is wearing himself out, though"; or if the speaker be a little enthusiastic--they are enthusiastic sometimes in the outports: "That man is a real apostle."

Then again: "You don't know who that man is? Why, he was the champion wrestler till he came out here on mission work--wore the Border belt for two years. Some of the young bloods in Shanghai thought a missionary couldn't do much, and challenged him when he first came out. Didn't he punish them, though, and said, 'You see I am trying not to hurt you!' Why, he could have broken every bone in their bodies, if he had let himself."

Or again: "Mr. John! Now that man does real good. He has worked away for years, and every one must respect him. His is real solid work."

Then again, Mr. Baller of Ngankin. He is only to be named for every one who knows him to burst out into a eulogy. Mr. Studd's cricket renown is too widely spread not to make him exceptional from the outset; but those who have come across him in China seem already to have found out other things yet more noteworthy about him.

Thus the conversation goes on about pretty well every missionary any one knows anything about; and yet it winds up as it began: "But the missionaries generally are quite different,--hang about and make believe--and save money--and go home!" These typical missionaries no one seems to have ever met; yet every one who has been to China must agree one hears plenty about them. It begins on the voyage out, when you are told about the poor girls--the enthusiastic, misguided young girls they lure out to wretchedness, nobody knows where. "Clap them into Chinese dress the moment they arrive, and send them off up-country, where there is not a single European, in carts and all sorts of miserable conveyances. That's what they do. Why, the poor girls don't know themselves where they are going to."

This is the oft-repeated tale. And it is certainly highly probable that newly arrived missionaries, whether men or women, cannot pronounce the name of the place they are going to, nor even at first remember it. But there seemed some sound common sense in what an elder missionary said the other day: "Youth enables women to bear many hardships, under which they would break down in later life. And youthful enthusiasm carries many a young missionary over the first two years of Chinese life, where a woman of forty could not bear the change of climate and food. Besides, if, as is most likely, they become the wives of missionaries, there is a far more reasonable hope of a happy married life when the wife is already well accustomed to China and its ways before undertaking the cares and duties of a wife, than when she is brought out fresh from England and has to face all together."

However, Shanghai so far keeps up its old character for gallantry, that it never has a word to say against the lady missionaries, unless sometimes in a grumbling tone: "Did you ever really see a pretty one?" But, then, every one has. Captains speak rather sorrowfully of this, that, and the other who came out with them. And young men who go to church (young Shanghai does go to church a little; it is the men past their prime who only "have seats"),--young Shanghai speaks sentimentally of some fair apparition who looked so lovely in loose-fitting white and blue, and begins to question whether Chinese dress is not, after all, the most becoming. Certainly, fair hair looks all the fairer and softer above the loose-fitting clothes more generally associated with coarsest black.

And all the while the missionaries come in increasing numbers. With each freshly arriving steamer the cry is, "Still they come!" till China promises fair to be the best spiritually seen after country outside Christendom. Yet no missionary ever comes to the Europeans, whose spirituality seems to have so withered for want of exercise, that they resent nothing more than the idea that they could want a missioner to minister to their spiritual necessities or perchance have no spiritual wants.

Yet no account of Shanghai would be other than most incomplete which did not treat of the missionaries. They are a set apart, well known to one another, unknown for the most part to other Europeans, full of information about the China towns and Chinese generally, and abounding in racy anecdotes. How much good they do, who can estimate? They are certainly most refreshing to meet with, having a purpose in life, and reminding us sometimes that, as Faber says, "There are souls in this world that have the gift of finding joy everywhere."

But not all. The climate is trying; Chinese society is not of the liveliest; and there are--of course there always must be--a certain number of missionaries who do not seem quite the right kind of persons to have come out. How should it be otherwise? But it is a question whether that is more the fault of those of the inferior sort who come, or of those superior people who stay behind. But, setting aside this vexed question, the Roman Catholic missionaries do not appear nearly as cheerful and pleased with their surroundings as the Protestants. Nor, indeed, does one quite see what they have to make them happy--except, of course, always the love of God.

One time going up-river, after Chinkiang the saloon presented a picture of pigtailed Frenchmen--Jesuit Fathers in white Chinese clothes. As Jesuits are not allowed to go up-country till after a long preliminary training, and do not become full Jesuit Fathers till after at the least eight and not uncommonly fifteen years of preparation, if they are not far more skilled missionaries than those of the various denominations of Protestants, it would seem to show that in spiritual, unlike carnal, warfare training and discipline avail nothing. They reckon some one hundred thousand converts in Kiangnan. In some instances they have whole villages of Christians; but although Christians, they say it must be remembered these villages are Chinese still.

How merrily the French Fathers chatted over their coffee! But at the one word "France" every man waxed sorrowful! They say, however, they do not suffer from _mal du pays_, as do the Italians, many of whom have to go home, in consequence, sick with sorrowing. Not to be forgotten, however, is that French priest at Peking who, just returned from a long sojourn up-country, at the one word "France" broke down completely, and could _not_ recover himself. And once more I felt a tightening at the heart, thinking of that large house building at Ichang to receive Italian Sisters--simple, loving-hearted women, who for others' sins, not their own, will live and die so far away from that loved Italy for which Filicaja wished: "Ah! wert thou but more strong; or if not that, less fair!" The life of Italian Sisters in China seems altogether too sad. They all get sick; they cannot love the people; they long for Italy; and till now they have been obliged to bind the feet of the little girls confided to them, yet unable to bear the pain for them. But the French priests, too, seem to have nothing to look forward to, and their lives are more comfortless than certainly English people at home have any idea of. I recollect one French priest in a most remote village showing me--half excusing himself, half proudly--his one great luxury, a little window with glass panes he had put in near his writing-desk, so as to see to read and write till later in the evening. There was barely a chair of any kind to sit down on in his large barracklike room. He showed me a set of photographs of his native village in France; but I noticed he never dared glance at it himself while we were there. We were the first Europeans to visit the place during the three years he had been there, with the exception of an old priest, who once a year came three days' journey across the mountains to see how he was going on. By comparison, the life of Protestant missionaries seems so joyous; indeed, I have never been able to see why it should not be an exceptionally pleasant one--barring illnesses always.

The coming New Year was casting its shadow before it in Chungking in the shape of gaudy pictures festooned about the streets, crackers of rejoicing by night and by day, and sad-faced young men wanting to realise on the family gold ornaments or picture-books by old masters offered at impossible prices. It cast its shadow also in other ways. The mission schools were breaking up, and the missionaries themselves going out to _schwa_, i.e. enjoy themselves in the country. Having been kindly invited to be present at the breaking up of the Friends' Girls' School, I noticed one or two things that appear worth recording.

Of course, I know missionary labours are popularly supposed to be the one kind of work on which we all of "the world outside" are qualified to pass discriminating judgment without ourselves requiring any preparation for so doing. A man may race across China as fast as he is able, and it is he who knows whether the missionaries are wasting their efforts on ungrateful soil, or whether opium does or does not disagree with the Chinese constitution, although he would hesitate to express an opinion on any such difficult question as whether a certain soil were suited for growing opium, or whether a merchant would be well advised to ship hides for the Shanghai market. Questions like these require specific knowledge. Not so the question whether missionaries in China are doing good. Notwithstanding which I must further premise that, just as when the new railways begin I individually should not feel in a position to say the navvies' work was being wasted because I saw no rails, so I do not feel in a position to say whether even the missionaries I know best are spending ineffectual toil because I do not see many Christians.

Judged by this test, indeed, what wanton extravagance might not the Shanghai Cathedral be pronounced! To some follower in our friend Dr. Morrison's footsteps I commend the calculation of the cost of its services to be divided by the number of converts thereby made. The sum would probably not be a difficult one, though the result might not be gratifying. For it costs more to redeem souls, etc.

But to return to twenty-six little girls, who were not converts. They passed an examination in the Old Testament, as it appeared, most creditably, although the eldest were thirteen. There was no hesitation in the answers, as one heard them affirming Jezebel was not a good woman, and telling about the hair by which Absalom was caught in the tree. And, after all, Jezebel and Absalom lived nearer to them than to us, and at least in their own quarter of the world. It is really odder to hear village children in England telling about the Old Testament kings, though it seems odder to hear Chinese children doing so. The younger children were also examined. Five little round-about bodies--for they were pretty well as thick as they were long--aged only six, repeated a hymn. Other hymns were repeated by other little detachments. All this was not surprising. But I was surprised when the first class, being led up to an outline map of Africa without names, called out Congoland, Madagascar, Natal, and the like as the examiner pointed. They did the same by Asia, cheeringly shouting out Japan, and equally readily indicating China. If into these little girls' heads it really had penetrated that there were other kingdoms in the world besides their own, they were in so far better taught than most of the literati of the land, and no knowledge would seem more to be desired for a Chinaman just now. After this the usual eye-trying needlework was exhibited, under protests from the European teacher that any one's eyes should be so tried, yet in this she felt obliged to conform to the fashions of the country.

But what struck me most (for it is the one matter on which I really felt qualified to form an opinion) was the expressions of the children. They were interesting, they were attractive, simply because the mind in them evidently had been aroused, and was working. The blank, dead-wall Chinese stolidity was gone. What may be the end of those children, what may be the outcome of it all, it is not for me to say; nor how far it is right to teach little girls who are not Christians Christian hymns. There are plenty of beautiful hymns they could learn, avoiding those about a Christ for whom they have no reverence. But one thing is clear: for good or for evil those little girls are with their awakened intelligences in a perfectly different position from those around them; and if their education is carried further forward--about which there are many difficulties in China--they will be in an increasingly critical position. And then seems to come the great danger. If they become Christians, well and good; they will have the ethics of Christianity to guide their daily life. But if not, removed from Buddhist influences, yet more in need of a guide than those around them, because themselves more susceptible of outside influences, one feels a certain uneasiness about them.

The proceedings wound up with what certainly seemed to give great pleasure: a gift of an article of clothing for every little girl from one member of the Mission, and then the great ceremony of choosing. Little collections of presents, sent out by the Missionary Helpers' Union, had been carefully sorted out and arranged upon the table,--a doll, a needle-book full of needles, an emery cushion, and a bag perhaps on one; woollen muffettees and a picture-book on another; and so on. The little girl who had most marks had first choice, and so on to the last, who had no choice at all, said the kindly lady teacher in great distress, her heart evidently aching for the little one, who must sit by and see all the best things chosen from before her eyes. "But she could have got more marks; it is her own fault," she added indignantly, the severity of the teacher once more gaining the upper hand; for this lady, young though she still was, was not a mere novice, but was teaching in England in a large and well-known Friends' School in the west country before ever she came to China, and came to China with the distinct purpose to teach little girls; into which work she appeared to put her whole heart, until ill-health forced her to come home. Some of the little girls had evidently studied the presents well beforehand, and came up to choose with their minds made up, making the Chinese reverence all round and up and down, then off to their mothers to put their treasures in safe keeping before going back to their seats. But it was pretty to see the indecision on some childish faces, growing redder and redder as first they pressed a white wool doll to their little bosoms, then fondled lovingly one in grey silk. All the dolls had been carefully dressed to suit Chinese notions of etiquette, with sleeves well down to the wrist, and the longest possible lace-trimmed drawers under their long dresses. But one wondered if the little Chinese children would not have preferred Chinese-clad dolls to nurse.

Anyway, each year, being presented with such useful and tempting-looking foreign gifts, although certainly not intended that way, must predispose the little girls to wish to buy foreign things when they grow up, recollecting the delight that foreign things gave them as children. In this way all the trouble of the Missionary Helpers' Union, formed of children at home, thus early trained to interest themselves in missions by being led to work for them, may have commercial results not dreamed of by the little workers. With its reflections my account seems nearly as long as the little ceremony. But I must not omit one feature of it. The Chinese mothers sat on benches all round, flushing with pride as their children distinguished themselves, and the Mission ladies sat in front behind the prizes. Then in came all the Mission babies, with their faces so startlingly clean by comparison with the Chinese as to look like beings from another sphere, rosy, and kicking about their white fleecy shawls and other pure whitenesses. Disdainful, indeed, the babies appeared, and were themselves probably the crowning feature of the show; for the Chinese certainly delight in foreign babies, and are never tired of examining them. I cannot emulate _An Australian through China_, and reckon up the cost per head; but I think the whole proceeding must have resulted in a certain amount of friendly feeling, and some of joy. Can we confidently say even as much of the Marlborough-Vanderbilt wedding?

There is, however, besides the climate, another sad element in life in China, and that is the dislike of the Chinese to foreigners and distrust of them.

It was sad to hear, shortly after this prize-giving, that there were again anti-foreign placards out on the walls of Chengtu, the capital of the province, of a very violent description, and that the Canadian Mission had already been more than once the object of hostilities in a small way. Yet one would like to know whether in their new buildings they were consulting Chinese taste, or building some hideous European erection which must offend the æsthetic feelings of every Chinaman that sees it. In this city of beautiful roof-curves a foreign house, without any proportion being observed between its windows and wall space, without any sweep of overhanging eaves, and built as no architect, European or Chinese, would build it, strikes a dissonance like a wrong note in music, and must be very irritating to those attuned from childhood to the laws of beauty in architecture. Why we should insist upon the Chinese swallowing our ugly clothes and ugly houses before they receive our beautiful gospel of glad tidings, I never can understand, except by reminding myself that that gospel never came from Shanghai or New York, but from that very Asia where still truth and beauty seem to Asiatics synonymous and interchangeable.

The views of the Chinaman, who has done more than any man of this generation to stir up anti-foreign feeling among his countrymen, are more to the point, however, than any words of mine. Chou-han has for years been circulating tracts of so offensive a nature against Christians that I cannot further refer to them; but here is Chou-han's own letter on the subject to Tʽan, the Governor of Hupeh. It is interesting, in connection with this letter, to remember that it was Tʽan's son who was among the first six beheaded by order of the Empress-Dowager when she deposed her nephew, the Emperor, and that Tʽan, the father, either died of grief or killed himself, heartbroken on hearing of his son's death.

This is Chou-han's letter to him:

"_October 30th, 1891._

"VENERABLE AND RESPECTED SIR.

"Multiplicity of affairs leaves me but little leisure for letter-writing, and it is a long time since I have written to inquire after your health. I would humbly congratulate you on the ten thousand happinesses which attend your downsitting and uprising, and on the abundance of your virtuous deeds and meritorious achievements. With regard to the anti-heresy publications, let me state that they are all of them printed and disseminated by myself, in concert with the officials and gentry, both civil and military, who have the management of affairs connected with the Benevolent Halls. Some time ago a relative of mine, Tʽang Chenpih, styled Mungliang, a native of Siangtan, was going to Wuchang, and we unitedly entrusted him with a hamperful of these publications for general distribution. After this a special messenger was sent by Tʽang to Siangtan, to inform us that he was imprisoned on account of what he had been doing, and praying that we would come to his rescue, etc., etc. This is amazing! If, indeed, it be wrong to attack this depraved heresy, then I am, so far as the matter of fabricating words and creating disturbances is concerned, the chief culprit. In all reason, you ought to report me to the Throne, deprive me of my official rank, and arrest me as a criminal. What has my relative Tʽang to do with the matter? And even should you take off his head and hang it up as a warning to all, how could you by so doing put a stop to the thing itself?

"My special object in writing now is to beg of you to consult with the Viceroy, and set at liberty my relative Tʽang and every one of his companions, who together with him are unjustly implicated; also to return to them every article of property which may have been possibly taken away from them. I beg of you to prepare a joint statement of facts, and to impeach me in a memorial. I will respectfully wait my punishment in the provincial capital; I will certainly not run away. If however, your Excellencies will treat good and honest people like fish and pork, and put me aside and not examine me, then I will go at once to Peking, and cry at the gate of his Majesty's Palace. I swear that I will with my own body requite the beneficence of Yau, Shun, Yu, Tʽang, Wen, Wu, Cheu-kung, Kung, and Meng, together with the beneficence of his Majesty the Emperor, the Empress-Dowager, and all the ancestors of the Great Dynasty. I shall certainly not allow my relative Tʽang and his injured companions to hand down a fragrant name to all coming ages alone. I am anxiously looking for your reply, so as to decide whether to proceed or to stop. It is for this I now write, also wishing you exalted enjoyment.

"Your younger brother and fellow-countryman Chou-han writes with compliments. Chou-han, imperially honoured with the Second Rank, and expectant Taotai in Shensi, a native of Ninghiang, now at his own village recruiting his health."

_Translated by the Rev. Dr. Griffith John._

One cannot but admire Chou-han for his outspoken boldness, as also for his persistence in opposing what he believes to be a depraved heresy. On the other hand, turning to his tracts, it is difficult to believe that any one could circulate them with a good intention.

People who do not believe the Chinese would be any better for becoming Christians can be but little interested in missionaries. Those who, on the other hand, really believe we have glad tidings to tell to them may doubt whether quite the right means are being taken to deliver the message. If every one who went out to China lived as a Christian should, it clearly would have a far more striking effect; but whilst Europe remains what it is, that seems at least as unattainable as converting the Chinese. Of those who are converted, I have come across thousands of Roman Catholics who have borne the burning of their houses and devastation of their property. There were four thousand Roman Catholic refugees in Chungking in the summer of 1898. Not a few have been killed. And in the west of China several cases have occurred where men have been offered their lives if they would burn incense upon Buddhist altars, and have refused and been martyred. I do not know how converts could more prove their sincerity than by thus dying. But of Protestant converts, too, I do not think the staunchness has at all sufficiently been estimated. When riot after riot occurred all along the Yangtse, in some cases all the foreigners went away, leaving their converts to shift for themselves. Native evangelists carried on the services, and there were the congregations just the same when the missionaries came back. Whilst, to turn to lesser persecutions, sometimes even harder to bear, how many Chinese Christians have seen their business fall away from them, and from a position of competence have been reduced to poverty! As long as Treaty Ports exist in China, probably their common talk will be that Chinese Christians are no good; for there of all places men of bad character may be expected to join the Christian communities from interested motives: but on the whole, though naturally they cannot attain to all the Christian virtues at once--it will probably require a generation or two to arrive at such an approximation even as we have ourselves arrived at--yet in the matter of staunchness Chinese Christians stand as high as the Christians of any nation at any age.

If my opinion, however, be anything worth, and on this matter I am not the least sure it is, it is not money so much our missionaries want in the East as sympathetic upholding. Let them feel that their countrymen, not missionaries in name, are wishing them more power, and not taking account of their failures, and they will be upborne to do greater deeds than those of old. Would, however, that missionaries may also believe that those not nominally of their band may notwithstanding be animated by quite as living a Christian zeal!

As it is, the way in which missionaries and merchants eye each other askance is often very painful. As to the differences between the sects, I think these are as much and as needlessly exaggerated as those between different kinds of Chinese. Chinese converts must be further advanced in Christianity than is often the case now to be able to appreciate the difference even between Roman Catholicism and Congregationalism. They see there is a difference in ceremonial. But to that Chinese are much too wise to attach much importance. They fancy all are "good talkees" of different kinds. And are they far wrong? The sincerer the Christian the less importance he always seems to attach to differences of belief and form.

It is sad to reflect that had there not been such fierce rivalries between the cardinals in the thirteenth century, and a consequent Papal interregnum of three years, Kublai Khan's request to the two brothers Polo would have probably been acceded to, and the Chinese become Christians then _en masse_, after the fashion of the kindred Russian race. Kublai Khan had "begged the Pope would send as many as one hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with the Seven Arts, well qualified to enter into controversy, and able clearly to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other kinds of folk, that the law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and naught, and that if they would prove this, he and all under him would become Christians and the Church's liegemen. Finally, he charged his envoys to bring back to him some of the oil of the Lamp which burns on the sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem." There is a miniature of the fourteenth century of the great Khan delivering a golden tablet to the brothers. They started for Rome on this mission with a Tartar Baron, but he fell sick and went back. They were three years upon the journey, then delayed, waiting till a Pope, Gregory of Piacenza, was at last appointed. He sent two learned Dominicans with them--two instead of a hundred--and these two friars were terrified by a Saracen outbreak, and turned back in their turn. Again, in the eighteenth century the Chinese would, it seems, have become Christians, but that the Dominicans then came and opposed the Jesuits, who had effected an entrance in 1580, and had gained great influence over the Emperor and the nation. The Dominicans and Franciscans condemned the Jesuit toleration of ancestral worship, and for the second time China was thrown back. The Emperor and his advisers were considering whether Christianity should not be proclaimed the religion of the country, when the _coup d'état_ came. Those of the reformers who have survived, and the Emperor Kwang-shü through them, have thus for the third time been holding out asking hands to Christendom.

In all these cases it has been European enlightenment, as embodied in Christianity, that the Chinese through their Emperors have asked for. But already we hear of governors and high officials actually becoming Christians themselves individually. Up till now none had certainly joined the Protestant Church, and I think none had been baptised into the Roman Catholic Church, for I have always understood in China it was doubted whether a man could become a Christian and retain official place.

China has appealed to Christendom for the third time. May it not be in vain! Of all means for helping her, the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge seems the most useful at the present juncture, and £20 would bring a new city under its influence, while £200 would enable this Society to permeate a whole new province with its revivifying literature.