It is obvious that as missionary societies lay weight on one or the other of these objects, they will support a different kind of school. If their object is the first, they will seek to educate the orphan and the waif, and the school and the orphanage will be, as they are in the Roman Catholic body, intimately joined together. If the object is to edify the Christian body and to provide it with a suitable pastor, the missionary body will erect primary schools for Christian children and theological and normal schools to complete their school system. If, on the other hand, the missionary body aims at leavening the whole thought of China, of capturing China for Christ, or if it aims at defending China against the terrible pest of Western materialism--which will turn the light that China now has into black darkness and harden her for ever against Christian teaching--the High School, {265} College, and the University will be the objects on which the money will be spent. This last has been the object of the American bodies; and I think China owes a great debt of gratitude, under God, to the great width of thought and grasp of the situation that the American mind has exhibited. {266} CHAPTER XXII GOVERNMENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM One of the highest testimonials to the wisdom of the missionaries in inaugurating an educational policy has been given by the Chinese Government. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, and missionary education has its imitator in no less a body than the Chinese Government. The Chinese have always loved education, but the education they admired was the literary education which had for its commencement the Chinese character and for its end the Chinese Classics; their system of teaching was different from our own; they were far greater believers in learning by rote than the most conservative English schoolmaster who ever set a long repetition lesson to his pupils. It is a strange sight to see an old-fashioned Chinese school, the boys all shouting out at the top of their voices the names of the characters whose meaning they do not understand. An essential part of the performance is the clamorous shouting; the louder they shout, the harder they are working and the quicker they think they learn, so when the visitor surprises a class their voices are not raised above a pleasant and reasonable elevation, but after he has been {267} discovered by the class, the shouts increase in volume till the noise is only to be compared to the paroquets' cage in the Zoological Gardens.