ITS POINTS OF INTEREST. the Diffusion of Chrislian and. General he annual meeting of the Society for
Koowledge among the Chiness is over, and its speeches and resolutions are going the way of the spoken word. There remains the more durable Report of the Society, which, too long to be reprinted, yet deserves a glance at certain points of distinct interest. The report is f course, excellently printed and produced, containing a groat deal of detailed information about the Society, its work, its staff, its constitution, and' finally about the terrible happenings of the past year. Then comes an appendix with a variety of matter of use to all, while at intervals in the book we come on excellent illustrations of the siege in Peking, and, last but not least, a ph of the late Rev. Win. Muir-
Tt is to the general portion of the report that we wish to refer, particularly where is found the heading, Cause of Chinese Revolt against Christendom." After speaking of the long-rooted fear of foreign conquest which possesses the Manchu Government, and of the political encroachments of foreign nations, they say While the foreign morchants_ pointed to the increase of foreign trade with considerable satisfaction the Chinese Government mourned over it as, the, balancejof trade was against China, They regarded increase of "foreign trade as increase of drainage of their wealt Inside the Chinese empire, in every province, there were missionaries, Protestant and Catholic, who had_won the confidence of tens of millions. Taking advantage of the friendly feeling largely brought about by the missionaries, gigantic syndicates from Europe and America with the aid of their respective Governments, pressed, if not forced, the Chinese to make immense railway, mining and other concessions, primarily of course for their own advantage; and the whole world rang with the talk of the partition of China and. spheres of influence" were defined. Last of all the French Government, backed up the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to official status, which in practice meant considerable interference with the civil Government of China everywhere, under the prestige of France. The conceit of the Chinese would not let them learn from foreigners. Their ignorance of the principles of universal progress mace them weak compared with foreigners. Their powerlessness to prevent foreign development made them mad in their despair. Thus the fundamental cause of the Chinese revolt against Christendom, which has been the main hidden cause of our difficulties with China, was a failure to understand the conditions of universal progress and firm but erroneous belief from the beginning that foreigners aimed at the conquest of China, and that the philanthropic efforts of the missionaries which were winning the hearts of their people was only a deep-lai political scheme for that end.
Then, under different headings Missionaries, Merchants, the Diffusion Sociaty, and the many classes of Chinese Reformers, are considered in their relation to the crisis. Thus we come to the Relation of Foreign Governments to the Crisis," which is worth quoting in full.
It is the practice of all governments down all the ages to ce-operate with the leaders of religious thought. The Governments of Russia and France ce-operate with them to-day in all their dependencies. So does the Dute Government in the Dutch colonies. But Lord Salisbury, in his remarkable speech last spring at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, has frankly admitted that there is no love lost between the Foreign Otice and the Missionary Societies, though happily we had ote exceptions: both antong the ulsters and Consuls in China, The United States Government has adopted in the main practice the same policy towards their missionaries as the English Government, though no President of the U.S. has ever expressed sentiments in public like those of Lord Salisbury. "If it be asked why his extraordinary departure from the sound policy of ayes, it cannot be because the missionaries are uneducated, for some Missionary Societies none but university-educated men (which cannot he said of any other service in China). Others have a number of their men university-educated. Much less can it he because the missionaries are less educated than the leaders of the native religions in China. His Lordship assumes that the missionaries are indiscreet and rouse the angry feelings of the Chinese people. But the real fact is that, with fow exceptions, where the missionaries have not emerged from medieval dogmatic Christianity into modern national Christianity, their edu: tional, literary, medical, and "philanthropic work have so commended themselves to the consciences of the Chinese that a larg number of the mandarins, students, gentts and most of the people wherever missionaries work rejoice in their work, and in this terrible crisis in China many of them have risked their lives in defence of the mis ie It is not the rousing of the angry feelings of the Bit the success of the, nissionariens in stealing ple which the Chinese Government fears
{as they believe) the hearts of all their sub-me-tenths of all the so-called mis-onery riots are well known to be instigated by the Chinese Government ifeclf. It is only Foreign Ministers who never meet mandarins or people in their homes who are gulled by the Chinese Government for its own ends. The result of this misunderstanding on the partof the British and American Governments is to paralyze what is probably the most powerful ally they have in promoting the best interests of China and their respective countries and thereby hasten this terrible crisis which otherwise might perhaps have been averted.
It is well known that railway and mining syndicates touch the fungshun superstition of the people to the quick (just as Christian Missions touch their religious prejudices) and that a large number of the Boxers around Peking consisted of boatmen, barrowman, and country weavers, who believed that steam and machinery robbed them of their daily bread,—henes they joined in tearing up the railway, in cutting down the telegraph poles, and in putting to death all those who were found wearing foreign machine-made clothing. But, foreign governments would hardly advised on account of this ignorance..: d superstition to withdraw their protection from those who are engaged in the extension of railway and trade,—would they? Is not the conflict between light and darkness inevitable throughout all ages and is not love, the essence of Christianity, the best medium yet discovered for the transmission of the light in view of these complex relations it is greatly to be hoped that the foreign governments, syndicates, merchants and missionaries will ce-operate more in the future than in the past, for exch department is only a part of the great whole of progressive civilization, We stand or fall together, The relation of "the Superhuman" to the crisis follows naturally, and then come nine remarks on the native Press, and its growth under the influence of the new ideas. We have but indicated the trend of the more general portion of the Report, Dut have said enough, we hope, to show that it is well worth' reading for many reasons,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.