The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
hearted enough also to make his sympathy felt by its rulers,
still stands, and is _going_ to stand. But this most remarkable
and luminous paragraph of history—is there another such between
China and any other nation but ours?
(3.) Finally, as if to supply the last term required to complete
our relationship for all possible service to the Chinese race, as
if to openly designate and summon us to the office of aiding its
emergence into a new life, especially of ministering to it the
holy faith, (which is the best gift we have to impart, the one
secret and source of our happier lot,) for us and for us alone,
of all Protestant Christendom, by bringing to our soil, to the
presence of our institutions, to our church doors, a multitude
of Chinese people themselves, God provided the condition of
_personal contact_. That was the rounding and perfection of our
opportunity.
But, it will naturally be inquired, is not whatsoever exceptional
advantage gained for us in the past mostly annulled by the later
and recent record of social and political hostility here at home,
which stands against us in our account with China? I think not.
The shameful truth is, China is wonted to the ill-treatment of
her subjects on foreign Christian soil, and if we have furnished
no exception to the rule, our outrage has been milder than she is
accustomed to; so that, after all that has happened to wound her
feelings here, there still remains to us the benefit, though it
is nothing, I repeat, to be proud of, of comparison with worse
doers.
ADVANTAGES OF THE ANTI-CHINESE AGITATION.
I am glad to pass to a pleasanter topic, and to remark next, that
there are certain incidental consequences of the anti-Chinese
agitation, and, as well, certain circumstances felicitously
contemporaneous with it, that have operated to offset and
countervail the injury which that agitation may be supposed to
have inflicted on our relation with China—that have done more
than that.
First, it has developed and brought out into expression a _vastly
preponderant public opinion adverse to the whole movement_. The
argument for it has been heard and canvassed, and not without
sympathy; for it was presented by our own countrymen, and it
was not to be questioned that they were in a measure of honest
difficulty of some sort with the matter they brought to trial.
But I think it is entirely true to say that the event of the
discussion has been that the argument is answered. It did not
stand as to its facts. I believe that all the main counts of the
indictment against Chinese emigration and Chinese emigrants we
severally disproved to the public satisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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