4th December.
Tue annual meeting of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese takes place this afternoon, and a very interesting meeting it is certain to be, but those who propose to attend it will do well to prepare themselves by a perusal of the fourteenth annual report of the Society, which has just been published. It is drawn up, we presume, by the indefatigable and devoted honor ai secretary, Dr. Timothy Richard, whose knowledge of the great forward movement in China that it is the Society's object to stimulate and assist is unparalleled. The report contains four valuable and interesting portraits, Prince Chun, "the Emperor's brother, who went on a mission of apology to Germany for the murder of the German Ambassador Heii Yung-i, "member of the Grand Council, executed in 1900 for opposition to the reactionary Government and Hsit Ching-cheng and Yuen Chang, "members of the Foreign Office, executed in 1900 for changing a word in the edict to ' Kill' foreigners to Protect.'" The names of these three victims of the Empress Dowager's barbarity, with those of the six martyrs of the coup d'état, will shine very bright hereafter on Chiaw's roll of men to be honoured through future ages.
The greater part of Dr. Richard's report is a sketch of the work before the Society, of which it may be mentioned en passant that Sir Robert Hart is the President, and the progress that has been made in the past year. Bryant's well-known lines, Truth crushed to earth shall rise again The eternal years of God are hers But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers, have had a remarkable illustration in the past three years in China, Reform received a blow in 1898 which was intended to kill it, and in 1900 the Empuess Dowager and her friends made another assault on it which they thought would crush it for ever. It has risen again stronger than ever; as before, the blood of the martyrs has been its seed, and the Empress Dowager herself has had to publicly proclaim her desire to see it grow strong and spread over the Empire.
The aim of the Society, says Dr. Richard, " has been nothing less than the removal of the ignorance and pitilessness which hinder all progress in China, and the substitution for them of knowledge and goodwill, so that there may be peace and harmony between the white snd yellow races. Till that is done, with China looking to the past for its ideals, and the West to the future, all attempts at harmonious action are as futile as would be an attempt to plough with two oxen yoked one with its head forwards and the other with its head backwards." The solution of the problem has not been found by the Foreign Ministers, whose work has been chiefly confined to the punishment. of China for some of her great crimes, and the securing of guarantees for the payment of the indemnity.
Foreign Diplomats alone cannot succeed in bringing China into line with Western ideas, because they are necessarily confined to political relations, and are fully occupied with practical measures which arise out of supposed axioms of international intercourse." The foreign merchants cannot solve the problem, for the average Chinaman has no more love for the merchant than he has for the missionary, and "the foreign merchant as a rule never speaks the Chinese language himself. Who then is to explain the philosophy of trade and give the Chinese some elementary knowledge of political economy? Who but the missionary?" After sixty years, though much has been accomplished, missionary work has been far from accomplishing what was hoped for it. Literature ofa high order must be provided, in order that the ruling classes of China, from whom it will descend to the masses, while it will not ascend from the masses to the upper ranks, may understand the truth that the Westerners bring with them. The great work is to be done by translating the choicest Western literature into Chinese, so that the ignorance which is the real cause of the anti-foreign feeling in China may be dispelled where its existence is most baneful.
Wonderful results have been achieved already. The tide of opinion in China is unmistakably in favour of reform, and Dr. Richard mentions some of the promising indications. He begins with the municipally-assisted school. that is to. be established here to accommodate 500 pupils, for which the gentry of Shanghai have subscribed Tis, 30,000, our Council giving a site, and promising an annual grant-in-aid. He mentions Ching Chang's school for 100 Ningpo children, and the school that the Cantonese propose starting here for 100 Cantonese children, He mentions the gift to Shanghai by a Chinese gentleman of his very rare and valuable library, with the sum of $50,000 to' build a library, museum, lecture ball, ete., to be in the Council's care; and adds that Sir Thomas Hanbury has promised to give an equal sum "to make the buildings larger." He mentions also the college that is being established by Yuan Shih-kai at Chinanfu, and the efforts that are being made in other provinces to encourage the spread of Westera knowledge. Dr. Richard also mentions the monograph on " Religious Liberty" which he drew up in Chinese for Li Hung-chang, who wanted to know how religious differences were composed in the West, and which has been circulated among the leading Viceroys and Governors. On receipt of twenty copies of this monograph, H. E. Chang Chih-tung made the Society a present of three thousand dollars.
The edict, surprising in view of its source, issued on the 13th of September last, ordering the establishment of universities, colleges, and schools of Western learning throughout the empire is characterised by Dr. Richard as "one of the most gigantic revolutions of modern times."
was what the Emperor proposed three years before. Another good sign was the mission of Prince Chun, considering that no Manchu Prince has hitherto been allowed to travel beyond thirteen miles outside of Peking. It is noted that as Prince Chun passed through Shanghai he readily granted an interview to each of the missionary societies here.
As to the visible work of the Society, we find that 48,950 copies of books, comprising 5,572,000 pages, were'published daring the year and there are a large number of valuable books in the press and in preparation, noted that the sales of books in 1898 reached about $18,500; in 1900 they fell, in consequence of the Boxer troubles, to $6,250; they have already recovered this year to $12,700. We have here, in fact, in our midst a great work which has already met with even more success
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.