Village Life in China: A Study in SociologySmith, Arthur H.
General
Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology
Smith, Arthur H.
China -- Social life and customs; Villages
In the first place it can take better care of them. The dense and
impenetrable ignorance which sacrifices so large a proportion of Chinese
infants during the first two years of their life, might perhaps be
counteracted in other ways, but it is probably safe to predict that it
never would be. To the Chinese girl the practical introduction of
Christianity will mean even more than to her brother. It will prevent her
from being killed as soon as she is born, and will eventually restore her
to her rightful place in the affections of her parents. It is never enough
merely to point out the folly, danger, or sin of a given course of action.
There must be moral as well as intellectual enlightenment, coöperation in
a new social order, the stimulus both of precept and example, and adequate
moral sanctions. This can be furnished by Christianity alone. History
testifies that if Christianity begins to lose its power, the dormant
forces of human selfishness, depravity and crime reassert themselves in
infant murder.
Christianity will call into existence a sympathy between parents and
children hitherto unknown, and one of the greatest needs of the Chinese
home. It will teach parents to govern their children, an accomplishment
which in four millenniums they have never made an approach to acquiring.
This it will do, not as at present by the mere iterative insistence upon
the duty of subjection to parents, but by showing parents how first to
govern themselves, teaching them the completion of the five relations by
the addition of that chiefest one hitherto unknown, expressed in the words
Our Father. It will redeem many years during the first decade of
childhood, of what is now a mere animal existence, filling it with
fruitfulness for a future intellectual and spiritual harvest.
It will show Chinese parents how to _train_ as well as how to govern their
children--a divine art of which they have at present no more conception
than of the chemistry of soils. It will put an end to the cruelty and
miseries of foot-binding. Toward this great reform there was never in
China the smallest impulse, until it had long been urged by Christian
forces. If it shall prove at length to have successfully taken root in
China apart from Christianity, that fact would be a luminous star in the
East showing that there are no Chinese walls which may not ultimately fall
before the blast of Christian trumpets.
Christianity will revolutionize the Chinese system of education. Such a
revolution might indeed take place without reference to Christianity. The
moral forces which have made China what it is, are now to a large extent
inert. To introduce new intellectual life with no corresponding moral
restraints, might prove far more a curse than a blessing, as it has been
in the other Oriental lands. Christian education will never make the
mistake so often repeated of seeking for fruits where there have been
no roots. It starts from a fixed point and moves onward to a definite end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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