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
There appears to be no alternative. And yet this policy,
while adhered to, should be enforced with reasonable discretion
and due regard to ``this present distress.'' How can Christians,
who can barely live themselves and pay a half or two-
thirds of their pastor's present support, suddenly meet this call
for enlarged salaries? For reasons already given, it is harder
for them to make ends meet now than it was in the old days
of primitive simplicity, while in many places a profession of
Christianity is followed by the loss of property and employment
so that the Christian is impoverished by the loss of the income
that he already had. In these circumstances, both boards and
missions must simply do the best they can, and neither allow
the emergency to sweep them into a mistaken charity that
would be fatal to the ultimate interests of the cause nor allow a
valuable native worker to suffer for the necessaries of life.
``We need to bear in mind that the low salaries of China are not the
product of Christianity, but of heathenism, and the ability to live on five
or six Mexicans per month is not the result of a laudable economy unknown
to Christian countries, so much as it is the result of a degradation
of manhood to the level of beasts. The church is responsible for
the knowledge of a better way of living. We have created the desire for
a clean house, clean clothing, healthful food, and books, on the part of our
educated young men. Shall we implant this desire for six or eight years
and take the rest of the man's life in trying to squelch it? We have come
as apostles of truth to a mighty empire, to the great and the small, to the
rich and the poor, and if we had a native ministry which could appeal to
a different class of men than most of them are now appealing to, would
not the day of self-support be hastened beyond what we dare to hope? Is
there not a feeling out for something better on the part of the well-to-do,
the more intelligent, just as really as there is on the part of the lowest
classes? Do not we have a mission to the man who can pay $100.00
a year to the church just as really as to the one who pays 100 cash?
There is nothing so costly as cheap men. Let us have a higher grade of
men and we shall have a higher grade of church-membership. Is it not
true that nothing more stands in the way of self-support than some of our
native clergy? We must not turn down better men because they must
have a little more to live upon than poor men.''[87]
[87] Mr. F. S. Brockman, Address--``How to Retain to the Church the
Services of English-Speaking Christians,'' Shanghai, 1904.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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