There is no better augury for future good relations between the thinkers and scholars (if not the Governments and peoples) of East and West than the recent growth of a tolerant and generous spirit on the part of European students of oriental ethic and religion. One still hears constantly of "heathen" and "pagan"--words which, however inoffensive in their original meaning, have come to be regarded as somewhat opprobrious epithets; but that there is a very decided change for the better coming over missionary enterprise in China can be proved very simply by a comparison between the sympathetic appreciation shown in the passage from which the above statement is quoted (written, be it noted, by one who is keenly interested in missionary work in China) and the almost inconceivable bigotry and narrow-mindedness shown by many missionary writers only a few years ago. Even Dr. Legge, the laborious and conscientious translator of the Chinese classics, allowed his Christian prepossessions, as we have already seen, to obscure his judgment and stultify his conclusions. "Their sages, _falsely so called_," is how he refers to some of the greatest ethical teachers the world has seen.[339] "In January, 1882," writes a doctor of divinity, "a distinguished missionary in China attacked Max Müller as a foe to missions and as a heathen because he had instituted the series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East. The translation itself was an offence; but the use of the title _Sacred_ definitely fixed Müller's status. Moreover, at even a later date, some missionaries in answer to the query from Chinamen 'Where now is Confucius?' were prompt to reply 'In hell.'"[340] The missionaries of to-day (let us hope against hope that there are no exceptions) have abandoned their old savage belief that the "heathen" as such are destined for eternal damnation. This change of belief is of itself sufficient to revolutionise the attitude of Christian peoples towards those who are not Christians, and surely it makes the need of proselytising the "heathen" infinitely less urgent than it seemed to be when that theory still held sway. "If God be father of all," writes a missionary of fourteen years' standing in China, "it is as impossible to believe in the Bible as the sole written depository of the Spirit of God as in the condemnation of the heathen which once we were constrained to believe it taught."[341]