Tan question hav often been raised whether the means adopted by Mis-jon aries in China are the best to extend influence amonget the Chinese. The Baron von Richthoven makes the tactical suggestion that missions would bott advanced by the establishment of industrial rather than religion schools, while as most of nur readers are aware, Mr, Wade's ideas are that the mandarin classes are those to be first attacked and that by means of an intimate, nay slavish, knowledge of their own classics. Now there is here just such " distinction as one might expect to meet between the man of practice and the man of idea, each anxious to carry out matters according to his own preconceived course. We are not disposed to differ so far from Mr. Wade as to believe) that no good could arise from a study of the Chinese classics, depressing us they are to the human intellect, nor on the contrary to coincide in its entirety with the worthy Baron's idea, that conversion to a proper faith would rapidly follow on the improvement of the industrial resources of the Empire. Most religions owe their origin to the lower classes; the Great Head of the Christian religion himself, though of royal descent, was born and bred amongst humble craftsmen; Mahomet came of a decayed family; and Buddha himself, though the heir to a kingdom, found his supporters, not amongst the sauctimonions Brahmans or the lordly Kshatrivas but amongst the poor and the outcasts, Lhe religion which boasted of its greatest miracle, that the poor had the Gospel preached to them; which even in the hands of the learned St. Paul was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness, has not in the nineteenth century so altered its complexionasto prove more acceptable to the scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, than to the lowly and despised publican. What obtruded itself on the minds of the first preacher of Christianity, that not many wise not many mighty were called, obtrudes itself equally onthe missionary of to-day. Apart from religions fervour or class prejudice, he addresses unself to those most wil him that such are Dot to be found message, avd experi
amongst the narrow-minded and bigoted students of the Classics, who have learned to suck in with their mental pabulam an hypocrisy more deep and shameless than is to be found amongst similar classes elsewhere. What should we think of the missionary who, in order to convert the European world, should address his labours to the edification of a Kant, a Hume or a Voltaire? Yet such men in their way were eminently seekers after truth. It was not to the Brahmans of India that Sakyamuni "addressed his discourses, nor was it amongst the clergy of northern Enarope that the reformation of the sixteenth century made its way. "Each of these classes felt that their own supremacy, which bad been built up on the traditions of centuries, and which had at last become too galling for endurance, was called in question by the new doctrine; and each in turn, to the utmost of their power, by argument, persuasion and persecution, tried to extinguish the rising spirit, which threatened destruction to their order. Equally narrow-minded, and if possible more grasping and deadening 1 its touch, is the so-called literary aristocracy of China, and in this fact we read both the success of the missionaries and: the anger of the authorities. More wise than their apon logists, the mandarins see in the pro-gross of missions their own, downfall, and shrink from the sight as instinetively as the ox from the threshold of the slaughter-house, Although such in the main is, we believe, state of the case, we do not wish to deprecate the advi bility of a higher class of men as Missionaries. The man whose hands are hardened by daily Inbour may have in the work his allotted task, as may the mau, of the most profound learning and deep research, and both may be successful, not alone in converting dogmatically the Chinese, but in raising their mental and moral status, A man's social position'is of less influence in this respect than his natural disposi With all respect for the body of For Missionaries, we have not seldom drawn attention to their shortcomings, though we have also been desirous to acknowledge the work done by them in China, whether evangelical or literary. Nature's own gentlemen spring from every class, and raise that to which they belong. Natare's own missionaries may be chosen irrespective of class, provided they have the s tions, Some may be eng trial pursuits, some even in gaining a foothold amongst the students of the Four Books, and some in extending knowledge amongst the people. All in their way, even if they do not extend the circle of professing Christians, may add their mite to the happiness and wellbeing of the masses amongst whom they sojourn.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.