But missions are not anxious merely for a University {309} as a means of defence against the materialistic onslaught which threatens their work--they need it for many other reasons; for instance, the University would make it possible for all denominations to have highly educated native ministers. No student of missions can ever be content to regard them as an ideal arrangement. The conception of a race being ministered to spiritually by another race is obviously inadequate; it is open to many criticisms; there must be a confusion in the mind of the convert between what is national and what is Christian; one Chinese regarded Christianity with doubt because he had heard that the German Emperor is a Christian, and to his mind he is the embodiment of the fierce piratical Western races. The word which the Chinese use for robbers means red-bearded men, so associated, alas, is the Western race in China with war and rapine; it is easy for a member of the Western races to be misunderstood when he is talking about the religion of love. Would any English parish like as its Rector a Chinaman, even if he were saintly and went so far as to cut off his queue? Setting aside the associations of the Western race, the Western race has great difficulty in speaking Chinese without making ridiculous mistakes. Who among us has not smiled when the Chinaman's inability to say the letter "r" has caused him to offer us "lice" to eat, but what must it be to the Chinaman when he hears the Western preacher lost amidst those mysterious Chinese intonations, and {310} therefore making some wonderful statement. A Chinese gentleman assured me that he had listened to a missionary extolling the virtues of a wild pig. Reverence forbids explaining what was really meant. If the ministers of religion are to be Chinese, it is obvious that they must be highly educated Chinese; to have religion taught by ignorant men in a country like China where learning is reverenced so profoundly, must be to condemn it as the religion of the coolie. The Chinese minister must be able to maintain his position, not only against the Confucian scholar, but against the Western materialist, and must therefore have an equally good education. Without saying that it is reasonable to expect that the Western missionary should be withdrawn within the next few years, I think it is wisdom for every mission body to aim at founding a body of educated native clergy who can free Christianity from the taunt of being a foreign religion, and who can, when the foreigner leaves China, take his place and uphold the faith.