Ly another column will be found a copy of a very important communication which Lord Salisbury, after consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, has wade to the Secretaries of the Societies in London which send missionaries to China. The communication itself is founded on a letter sent to the Foreign Office by one of her Majesty's Consuls st a Yangtze River port, containing certain recommendations for the conduct of missionaries in China, which the reader will certainly agree with Lord Salisbury in thinking both " sensible and useful." Those of us who take any interest in watching the progress of missionary enterprise in China will quite agree with the writer of the letter as to the "temperate and discreet conduct of the elder and more experionced missionaries of all denominations." To them these recommendations will hardly be necessary, but it is to the Mr. Sweetapples, who come out full of zeal, and with an idea that the fire they feel in them will start a conflagration in which the old beliefs and superstitions of the Chinese will be consumed out of hand, that these restraining words are addressed. hey will not be convinced at first that the root-and-branch system of procedure does more harm than good; they will have no temporising with the heathen, and it takes time to convince them that there are "certain matters in which it is very desirable to disarm misconstruction, and avoid exciting susceptibilities." As to the inspection of orphanages and schools, missionaries themselves have welt from time to time in our columns on the advisability of not merely allowing, but encouraging this; it cannot be too often impressed on' the young missionary that it is the experience of all merchants, indeed of all who have resided for any length of time in this country, that the Chinese are essentially a reasonable people; that they will not abuse the opportunities offered them for inspection of missionary establishments; and that the adage of Horace as to the much greater persuasiveness of the evidence that appeals to the eye, than of that which appeals to the ears, is especially true in China.
The next paragraph of the communication will undoubtedly offend a great many bigots in England as well as in
refrain from circulating uncommented translations of certain books. of the Bible, such as Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the Song of Solomon, ete., which contain passages easily open to misrepresentation if unexplained." We are very glad to see this recommendation come backed by two such good churchmen as Lord Salisbury and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is done—apart from the mere waste of money and labour—in circulating among the Chinese copies of the Bible without note or comment. It is a fraud on the! people who subscribe money to the Bible Societies at home, and a fraud on the Chinese who believe, when they'buy a translation of the Bible, that they are getting a sacred book which they can read and understand, while they -are really getting a book which, without notes and explanations, is in great part little better than absolute nonsense to them. The subject was most ably treated at the Missionary Conference here two years ago by the late Dr. Williamson, an authority on the subject of the highest rank; and he took for the motto of his essay an extract from an article by Mr. Lilly in the Nineteenth Century: "There is another reason not generally apprehended for the failure of Christian missions in India, It is- that the missionaries are so unfairly handicapped by the Bible Society... Cat there be a less hopeful mode of inducing the Hindu or Mohammedan to embrace Christianity than to place in his hands the Bible without note or comment?' He makes his own notes... and the intelligent Oriental's notes and comments would very much astonish Exeter Hall." It is to be feared, however, that this official appeal to the Bible Societies will be as fruitless as have been the appeals of the missionaries who are shocked when they see books put into the hands of the Chinese as the Word of God, which to those who receive them are worse than gibberish. The difficulty is that the Bible Societies are so much more careful lest there should lurk in note a discrepancy with some-one's dogma, than that the Chinese should understand the Bible, that all of them have a clause in their constitutions binding them "to circulate the Holy Scriptures without note or comment;" and they expect a Chinese, as Dr. Nevius pointed out at the Conference, to ander-stand a simple sentence like "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God," when the translation they put into his hands reads literally "Gods's son Jo-ssu Ki-ta happy sound beginning."
We need not enlarge on the recommendations that follow, and that are obviously most advisable, but we are specially glad to see that Lord Salisbitry's attention has been drawn to the scandal caused by the China Inland Mission in the way it sometimes sends its female missionaries, dressed in Chinese clothes, about the country. We believe. that the best public opinion would sustain Lord Salisbury if he were to instruct the Consuls not to grant passports for the interior to unmarried English females in Chinese dress. 'l'hey may do some good when they get to their posts; but that good is outweighed by the scandal they cause in their ignorance of what the Chinese- consider good manners. They are perfectly innocent in intention, but they often shock foreign notions of propriety, and continuously shock those of the Chinese. But as long as those who conduct the China Inland Mission think that quantity is the only thing to be con sidered in missionary work, and that quality is nothing, this scandal will continue.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.