Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team
1907
Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them .
Heathen slaves and Christian rulers. No injustice is done to Christians in the title given this book. The word Christian is capable of use in two senses, individual and political. We apply the words Hindoo and Mahommedan in these two senses also. A man who has been born and brought up in the environment of the Hindoo or Mahommedan religions, and who has not avowed some other form of faith, but has yielded at least an outward allegiance to these forms, we declare to be a man of one or the other faith. Moreover, we judge of his religion by the fruits of it in his moral character. Just so, every European or American who has not openly disavowed the Christian religion for some other faith is called a Christian. Furthermore, such men, when they mingle with those of other religions, as in the Orient, call themselves Christians, in distinction from those of other faith about them. They claim the word Christian as by right theirs in this political sense, and it is in this sense that we employ the word Christian in the title of this book. The word is used thus when reckoning the world's population according to religions.
As we treat the Hindoo or Mohammedan so he treats us. Our Christianity is judged, and must ever be, in the Orient, by the moral character of the men who are called Christian; and the distinguishing vices of such men are regarded as characteristic of their religion. Official representatives of a Christian nation have gone to Hong Kong and to Singapore, and there, because of their social vices, elaborated a system, first of all of brothel slavery; and domestic slavery has sheltered itself under its wing, as it were; and lastly, at Singapore coolie labor is managed by the same set of officials. What these officials have done has been accepted by the Oriental people about them as done by the Christian civilization. It cannot be said that the evils mentioned above have been the outgrowth of Oriental conditions and customs, principally. It has been rather the misfortune of the Orient that there were brought to their borders by Western civilization elements calculated to induce their criminal classes to ally themselves with these aggressive and stronger Christians to destroy safeguards which had been heretofore sufficient, for the most part, to conserve Chinese social morality.