The day is past when any one in Europe, whether Christian or non-Christian, can be indifferent to what is happening in China. The Christian has indeed been for a long time alive to the importance of these developments, but the ordinary citizen with no strong religious views has usually neither displayed nor felt any interest in a country separated from us by so many miles and by such an untraversable gulf in thought and language. If the Christian has urged the importance of Chinese missions, his neighbours have answered by asking him why he cannot leave the Chinese to themselves and to their own religion. Whatever justice the opponent of missions in times past may have thought he had for this view, he cannot now maintain that the Chinese question is one which may be put on one side by any thoughtful man. The movements of this vast mass of humanity, amounting to a quarter of the population of the world, cannot but fail to have a very real and vital effect on the whole civilised world. The revolution that is affecting China brings Europe and America into close contact with a {21} country equal to Europe in size, and not far inferior in productive power. A few years ago China was so far away that except as an outlet for trade it had little interest for people here. The voyage occupied many months and was esteemed a hazardous journey, owing to the dangerous coasts and typhoons of the China seas. Now a train-de-luxe conveys the traveller in a fortnight across Asia to Peking, and if the accommodation on the Chinese part of the railway is not altogether luxurious, the traveller remembers that it is far superior to that on the first railways opened in our own land. The journey is of course tedious, but the fact that business men in the north of China are talking of always spending their summer holidays in England, will show how close China is now to Europe. It is no exaggeration to say that in reckoning distance by the time it takes to complete the journey, China is nearer to England than London was to Scotland in the days of Dr. Johnson, while in point of comfort and convenience there is no comparison. The journey from London to Peking is far easier at the present day than the journey from London to Edinburgh in the days of Johnson's famous trip to the Hebrides.