P. Bland on Their Intolovant Contempt Towards Her Ancient Moral Codes One of your correspondents questions two of my statement That the foreign have forced their missionaries upon the fenceless Chinese; and (2) that the missionary propaganda violates the ancestral proprieties and instinctive beliefs of the Chinese people. Both statements are, nevertheless, absolutely and demonstrably true, With regard to the first: the Treaties of 1842 and 1860 are in themselves evidence enough that toleration for Christian Missions in China was extorted and maintained by force. Christianity therefore, bee from the outset irretrievably as sociated in the mind of the Chinese People with the humiliation of the Empire, and Christians (as distinct {rom Buddhists and Moharamedahs) have always been regarded with ion and hatred by the masses.
ake away your opium and "your missionaries," said Prince Kung to Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1869, "and you will be welcome.""
As regards. the second statement, 1 would merely observe that the great majority of Protestant mis sionaries (and most notably Americans) have always don utmost to undermine the domi principle of China's venerable (and, fon the whole, highly moral) system civilization, viz, the worship of ancestors. As u distinguished writer and sincere friend of China has well said, there is probably in all the world no stronger moral. principle than the systematized reverence for living and dead parents, deep root ed in the very soul of the Chinere people, "It links the living Chin man, by what he feels to be a real contact, not only with the whole past of his family and race, but with the future, in which he' shall liv a the past lives in, and about him. The attitude of Christian missiones towards this deep-rooted moral force (vide, the Shanghai Conterence of 1891), has generally been tone of intolerant contempt, quite sufficient in itself to account—for the hostile attitude of the Chinese towards Christianity.
Their Career of Failure It is not my intention, however, to enter into a discussion of the merits and prospects of the propaganda of the "two and 70 jarring sects" which are competing in the interpretation of an Asiatic creed to an Asiatic people, through the distorted medium of European and American dogma, "My prevent purpose is rather to plead that the Powers in Conference should agree to confine the activities of missionary. societies to religious teaching, medical, and charitable work, and that they should abstain rom further efforts to "build up a new China" through the agency of 1 sion-taught students and politician If there were any reasonable hope in the light of 60 years' experience of "Christian education in China" producing a superior type of Chi citizen, or the materials out of which an honest and efleient class of administrators might be prodieed, one might possibly sympathize with those who are substituting educational for evangelical propag-But all the facts of the aituation (including the anti-foreign and anti-Christian attitude of the Westernized Chinese) are such as to convince every disinterested observer that such hopes are not only delusive in. themselves, but highly dangerous in their application.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.