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
This is the need to which the churches of Europe and
America are addressing themselves through the boards and
societies of foreign missions. These boards are the channels
through which the highest type of Christian civilization is
communicated to pagan peoples, the agencies which gather up all
that is best and truest in our modern life and concentrate it
upon the conditions of China. From this view-point, foreign
missions is not only a question of religion, but a problem of
statesmanship, and one of overshadowing magnitude. As
such, it merits the sympathy and cooperation of every intelligent
and broad-minded man, irrespective of his religious affiliations.
Its spiritual aims are supreme and sufficient for every
true disciple of Christ, but apart from them its social and educational
value and its relation to the welfare of the race justly
claim the interest and support of all. In this work the Church
is saving both individuals and nations, and for time as well as
for eternity. It holds no pessimistic views of the future. It
denies that the development of the race has ended. It frankly
concedes the existence of vice and superstition. But it believes
that the gospel of Jesus Christ is able to subdue that
vice, and to dispel that superstition. So it founds schools and
colleges for the education of the young; establishes hospitals
and dispensaries for the care of the sick and suffering; operates
printing-presses for the dissemination of the Bible and a Christian
literature; maintains churches for the worship of the true
God, and in and through all it preaches to lost men the transforming
and uplifting gospel of Him who alone can ``speak
peace to the heathen.''
But some are saying that the Boxer outbreak has destroyed
their confidence in the practicability of the effort to evangelize
the Chinese. They are asking: ``Why should we send any
more missionaries to China?''
I reply: ``Why send any more merchants, any more consuls,
any more oil, flour, cotton? Shall we continue our commercial
and political relations with China and discontinue our
religious relations; allow the lower influences to flow on unchecked,
but withhold the spiritual forces which would purify
trade and politics, which have made us what we are, and which
alone can regenerate the millions of China?''
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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