And by conversion is not meant ``civilization.'' Here is the fundamental error of the pseudonymous writer of ``Letters From a Chinese Official.'' He evidently knows little or nothing of the missionary force or of the motives which control it. He writes as a man who has lived in a commercial and political atmosphere, and who feels outraged, and with some justice, by the policy which European nations have adopted towards China. From this view-point, it was easy for the quick- witted author to satirize our defects and to laud the virtues, some of them unquestionably real, of his native land. But it does not follow that his indictment holds against the Christian people of the West, who reprobate as strongly as the author the duplicity and brutality of foreign nations in their dealings with China. The West has something more to offer China than a civilization. As a matter of fact, the best people of the West are not trying to give China a civilization at all, but a gospel. With whatever is good in Chinese civilization, they have no wish to interfere. It is true that some changes in society invariably follow the acceptance of Christianity, but these changes relate only to those things that are always and everywhere inherently wrong, irrespective of the civilization to which they appear to belong. The gospel transformed ``the Five Points'' in New York not because they were uncivilized but because they were evil. It will do in China only what it does in America--fight vice, cleanse foulness, dispel superstition. Christianity is the only power which does this. It has transformed every people among whom it has had free course. It has purified society. It has promoted intelligence. It has elevated woman. It has fitted for wise and beneficent use of power. Of those who deny this, Lowell says: ``So long as these very men are dependent for every privilege they enjoy upon that religion which they discard, they may well hesitate a little before seeking to rob the Christian of his faith and humanity of its hope in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.'' No degradation is beyond the reach of its regenerating power. Witness the New Hebrides, Metlakatla, the Fiji, Georgia and Friendly Islands. Even England, Germany and America themselves are in evidence. Christianity lifted them out of a barbarism and superstition as dense as any prevailing among the heathen nations of this age. It can effect like changes in China if it is given the opportunity.