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
Substantially similar statements might be made regarding
other lands.
``The more we open the world to what we call civilization, and the more
education we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater are the
dangers to modern society, unless in some way we contrive to make all
the world better. Brigands armed with repeating rifles and supplied with
smokeless gunpowder are brigands still, but ten times more dangerous than
before. The vaste hordes of human beings in Asia and Africa, so long as
they are left in seclusion, are dangerous to their immediate neighbours;
but, when they have railroads, steamboats, tariffs, and machine guns, while
they retain their savage ideals and barbarous customs, they become dangerous
to all the rest of the world.''[30]
[30] Christian Register, December 3, 1903.
A Christless civilization is always and everywhere a curse
rather than a blessing. From the Garden of Eden down, the
fall of man has resulted from ``the increase of knowledge and
of power unaccompanied by reverence.... No evolution
is stable which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake
itself free from the eternal duties of obedience and of faith.
. . . The Song of Lamech echoes from a remote antiquity
the savage truth that `the first results of civilization are to
equip hatred and render revenge more deadly, . . . a
savage exultation in the fresh power of vengeance which all the
novel instruments have placed in their inventor's hands.' ''[31]
[31] The Rev. Dr. George Adam Smith, D. D., ``Yale Lectures,'' pp. 95-97.
What is civilization without the gospel? The essential elements
of our civilization are the fruits of Christianity, and the
tree cannot be transplanted without its roots. Can a railroad
or a plow convert a man? They can add to his material comfort;
they can enlarge the opportunities of the gospel, but are
they the gospel itself? What does civilization without Christianity
mean? It means the lust of the European and American
soldiers which is rotting the native Hawaiians, the European and
American liquor which is debauching the Africans, the opium
which is enervating the Chinese, 6,000 tons a year coming from
India at a profit of $32,000,000 to the English Government.[32]
[32] The Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, Sermon.
How can such a civilization prepare the way for Christianity?
As a matter of fact, the Chinese already have a civilization,
and if our civilization is considered apart from its distinctively
Christian elements, it is not so much superior to the Chinese
as we are apt to imagine. The differences are chiefly matters
of taste and education. The truth is that always and everywhere,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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