After making all due allowance for these things, however, the fact still remains that opposition of this sort in China is usually local and sporadic. It affects a greater or less number of individuals and families and occasionally a community, but it does not move a whole population to the frenzy of a national uprising. The anti-foreign hatred of the Boxers was fierce in thousands of cities and villages where there were no missionaries or Chinese Christians at all. In the sphere of religion proper, the Chinese are not an intolerant people. They are almost wholly devoid of sec- tarian spirit. The coming of another religion would not of itself excite serious opposition, for having become accustomed to the presence and intermingling of several religions, it would not antecedently occur to the Chinese that a fourth faith would involve the abandonment of the others. They would be more apt to infer that the new could be accepted in harmony with the old in the established way. So the worst foe that the Christian missionary has to encounter is not hostility but indifference. As a rule, the Chinese have not strenuously objected to the Protestant missionaries as missionaries. It is the policy of the mission boards to avoid all unnecessary interference with native customs. So far from coveting official equality with Chinese magistrates, an overwhelming majority of the Protestant missionaries throughout the Empire expressly declined to avail themselves of the offer of the Chinese Government to give them the same privileges and official status that was accorded to the Roman Catholic priests and bishops in the Imperial decree of March 15, 1899. ``The very thing which missionaries seek to avoid is denationalizing their converts. So far as mission schools at the ports are concerned, it is not the missionary who is chiefly responsible for what foreignizing is done. The Chinese who patronize these schools want their children to learn foreign accomplishments. Such schools, however, form but a very small part of the extensive educational work done by American missionaries in China.''[77] [77] The Rev. Dr. Calvin H. Mateer. Many of the missionaries, especially in the interior stations, don Chinese clothing, shave their heads and wear a queue. Everywhere the missionaries learn the Chinese language, try to get into sympathy with the people, teach the young, heal the sick, comfort the dying, distribute relief in time of famine, preach the gospel of peace and good-will, and, in the opinion of unprejudiced judges, are upright, sensible and useful workers. Not only men but women travel far into the interior, the former frequently alone and unarmed. They go into the homes of the people, preach in village streets, sleep unprotected in Chinese houses, and receive much personal kindness from all classes.