It you were to ask any group of missionaries in China what has deen the cause of the anti-Christian movement, most of them, I believe, woul put the blame on two men who have visited China, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, Now, in a cense they are right, but the movement was certain to come in any ease, It is in the spirit of the times. Tt is not an anti-Christian movement so much as a declaration of equality, a throwing off of the! inferiority complex by. people who had long accepted unprotestingly the rile of the taught, Partly as a result of critical tern themselves' and more because of the light in which the World War revealed the West, the Chinese had begun to voice their alrendy existing inner rebel-Jion against that role. But it was timid expression and narrowly confined. Then came from Christian lands two men, distinguished among their own people, whose testimony Jent authority to what had. been only hesitant skepticism and tent tive revolt. "Opposition became forthwith more open and confident. Only to this extent can the antic Christian movement be attributed to Mr, Russell and Mr. Dewey. For the forces are, in fact, sprung from the missionary movement itself, within which, in the 50 years, basic change' affecting both personnel and methods has taken place.
The Missionary Analized.
Before then, missionaries had been reefuited chiefly from a res-women, lo towns, who heard tracted class: very young men and! "the call" and went out to redeem the heathen. 'Their faith was! simple, their beliefs were troubled by doubt, their minds virgin of anything resembling an awareness of comparative religion, their experience in life and their' know-Jedge of the world even more Then "young men and women educated in the colleges began to Jcome out to the foreign mission field. They were of a generation thi made its peace, or a least its adjustment, with science. They did not fear the "higher criticism"; they had worked out a rebuttal." Having. studied sociology, they had widened the frontiers of religious concept far enough to take in the idea of "service." Now, that class is still in a minority; nor'are all Jof the younger generation included in it, but they are numerous enough and intellectually active enough to have large influence. One of the underlying dramas in the life of foreigners in the Far East in the past few years has been the conflict between the two generations, a con ict that extends, indeed, beyond the sphere of religious belief.
As a result of their training and their outlook, the younger men and women brought with them new methods, also. Theirs was not a Jdireet evangelism. They were less insistent on hell-fire and brims than on the virtues of the social consciousness. They even indicated [what the old-fashioned held to be 1 dangerous tendency to waive the literalness of some of the Biblical' tales. They believed that the Christian dgetrine could stand on its own merits, rationally aswell as emotionally. They aimed therefore the educated classes rather than the Peasant and the coolie. Nor, since hey had succeeded to their own satisfaction in reconciling science: und religion, did they fen science, Out of those two ideas arose belief {in the school "and the hospital as methods of conversion, and, therefore, an increasing proportion educational and medical rather than purely evangelical missionaries fend of funds devoted to educational fand medical work. The work te Jed to become at once less ecstatic and more efficiently organized. And in equal measure there Was widened the sout between the elder school and the modern, a The Consequences.
The consequences of the newer policy could easily have been predicted. The appeal to the educated classes rather than to the ignorant may have been more mature and luckier; it was also. more risky. When the old-fashioned missionary rade his appeal with hymns and
the "whale ie and Jonah in the belly of the peasants, if un pressed, could retort only with emotional unresponsiveness." When the young missionary elected to make his appeal to the educated on the rational merits of his gospel, he challenged their reason.
The present anti-Christian movement in China ig fundamentally only 8 declaration that the Christian jon sionary's complacent doctrine can no longer be accepted
ipso dixit to a rade heathen. It has been opened to examination and argument and even skepticism the missionary himself. Now, both the spirit of the times and' one's, own point of view may be in accord ith the younger missionary generation, but it is indisputable,—also, that in a sense the older school has ileon vindicated. Its methods, hymn-singing and tracts, brought converts, even if ignorant, or at Toast produced no organized hostility. The new methods, tainted with. intellectualism and unspiritual elements like. sociology, economies, philosophy and medicine, have aroused opposition, The older: school can point to the result and call it proof that religion must stand on faith alone.
Certainly
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.