THE CHINESE TO EVANGELIZE CHINA.
BY REV. C. H. POPE
Great good has been done in China by missionaries, but against what odds! Now in the free United States, the country whose government has been his nation’s most generous friend, and whose people have shown him most personal attention, the Chinaman can examine Christians with a criticism no less keen, but far surer to be correct. He has had no difficulty in seeing the difference between a “hoodlum” and a Sunday-school teacher. He has even been able to distinguish one reverend from another, and neither trusted “brother” Kalloch nor distrusted “brother” Pond. The international lesson he here learns as he could not at his home—that a line between the children of light and the children of darkness runs through many families, through all communities.
Now let him go back to China, if he must—that is, if he will! He goes tenfold more potent than any of us to find the way to his countrymen’s hearts. I once doubted Chinese interpreters of our teaching and preaching. On examination I came to believe that the English language is the best medium for us to tell the Gospel in—a language born of Christian civilization, enlarged by Christian teaching, ornamented by Christian poetry, matured by the translation of the Bible, developed in Christian education, carrying in its common phrases less of grossness or corruption, and more of plain goodness, than any other tongue. In the day and evening schools, and in the Sunday-schools and prayer meetings which this Association maintains, the Chinese interpreter plays a prominent part only for a short time. Soon he becomes little needed; the pupils rapidly gain knowledge of our words: from step to step they catch gleams of new ideas and find new words not numerous in comparison with their language, but wonderfully clear and helpful. Daily observation is their best interpreter; the winning tones of ladies and children gain their ear and reach their perception easily; they get broad, practical ideas of Christianity; and they can be trusted to preach the Gospel in Chinese to Chinese. No process has ever gone so healthfully and hopefully into the Mongolian heart.
We are not concerned to explain the presence of any race in our land, nor can we parley over the motives which brought them to it. Enough for us to see that these Sauls of Tarsus come into the “straight” way before they leave Damascus; and that when their eyes have been opened, and our forgiving Saviour has accepted them, we call them “brethren,” and kindly protect them from enemies. Enough for us to train them in all Christian truth and service, until they and we together get an adequate notion of the part they are fitted to take in their nation’s conversion. Then, unless our sister society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, shall take them into the far-off field for that grand work, we must formally equip and send them; for the Holy Ghost has said, “Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them.”