New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable AwakeningBrown, Arthur Judson
History
New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening
Brown, Arthur Judson
China -- Commerce; China -- Foreign relations; China -- Politics and government; Missions -- China
It is the foreign idea that the Chinese dislikes, the interference
with his cherished customs and traditions. A railroad
alarms and angers him more than half a hundred missionaries.
A plowshare cuts through more of his superstitions than a mission
school. He does not want the methods of our western
civilization, and he resents the attempt to push them upon him.
If no other force had been at work than the foreign missionary,
the anti-foreign agitation would never have started. It is significant
that those who protest that we ought not to force our religion
upon the Chinese do not appear to think that there is
anything objectionable in forcing our trade upon them. The
animosity of the Chinese has been primarily excited, not by the
missionary, but by the trader and the politician, and the missionary
suffers chiefly because he comes from the country of
the trader and the politician and is identified with them as a
member of the hated race of foreigners.
On this whole subject, I have been at some pains to collect
the testimony of men whose positions are a guarantee not only
of knowledge but of impartiality.
The Hon. George F. Seward, formerly United States
Minister to Chipa, declares:--
``The people at large make too much of missionary work as an occasion
for trouble. There are missionaries who are iconoclasts, but this is not
their spirit. In great measure, they are men of education and judgment.
They depend upon spiritual weapons and good works. For every enemy
a missionary makes, he makes fifty friends. The one enemy may arouse
an ignorant rabble to attack him. While I was in China, I always
congratulated myself on the fact that the missionaries were there. There
were good men and able men among the merchants and officials, but it
was the missionary who exhibited the foreigner in benevolent work as
having other aims than those which may justly be called selfish. The
good done by missionaries in the way of education, of medical relief and
of other charities cannot be overstated. If in China there were none
other than missionary influences, the upbuilding of that great people
would go forward securely. . . . I am not a church member, but I
have the profoundest admiration for the missionary as I have known him
in China. He is a power for good and for peace, not for evil.''
President James B. Angell, also formerly United States
Minister to China, replies as follows to the question, ``Are
the Chinese averse to the introduction of the Christian
religion'':--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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