Last week, I stood on the top of the Serpent Hill, where I had not stood for more than 80 years, and looked out over the great city of Wuchang. It was the same city, but how changed! Where there had been bare spaces, there are now buildings. I could not see my old house, though I know that it was still there. I was amazed to seo the foreign buildings—housc schools, hospitals. I was still m struck by the great number of Duildings, put up by Chinese, but in foreign fashion, The city now is 'a mixture of old and now.
This is a parable of China. The impact of the West has brought much that is new, But the old is still there, There is a strange mixture of East and West.
Tt is interesting to look back and trace the history of the inter course between Chinn and~ the West.
Travellers came to China in quite early days. A number of Western ideas were introduced into Eastern Asia, Even now their remnants are being uncovered in North China, Modern travellers have traced out the existence of 'a, great highway which stretched right across central Asia. A great explorer and scholar, Aurel Stein, has dug up the remains of ancient temples all along this great route. And in those temples have been found pictures which illustrate the fort of the West. But communica tion ceased, and with it the interchange of thought and religion. China became for long centuries the great secluded nation of the East. The records of former intercourse lay buried in the sands of Mongolia.
Bat last century the seclusion ceased. It is needless to go into the somewhat unedifying story of how it came about. And the impact of the. West upon East has brought about immeasurable changes. Methods of business, of warfare, and of science, have been produced into China. And the first result was a "dependence upon military force, an emphasis upon materialistic values, a desire for the accumulation of wealth and luxury. There wis danger—danger that China would learn the worst lessons of European civilization, and miss the best that we would give her.
And so, there were thoughtful men in the west who asked themselves "Can we permit this? Are jwe to give to China our modern industrial problems, our slums, our cannon and shot, our materialistic sscionee, and withhold from her the Imowledge that alone can make a nation great? Tt were a smirch and slur upon our civilization if this were allowed." So, Christian men of the West felt that they lad to give their test to China. And so. the missionaries came. They came to show: that men can only be made great through mora! power.
The Christian missionary in China comes to help with educa-increase of moral strength. If the men who hold high places and Wield authority are. not_men who prize moral strength and spiritual Walues then the power in the state is simply destruction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.