Changing China

by William Gascoyne-Cecil; Lady Florence Mary Cecil

CHAPTER XXI

EDUCATION, CHIEFLY MISSIONARY

I have before had occasion to refer to the great influence education has had on the awakening of China, and I think the Americans can fairly claim to have been the greatest workers in this field. The Roman Catholics have from time immemorial been most careful to train children in Christian truth, and they have wonderful institutions for this purpose. In 1852 the Jesuits founded the College of St. Ignatius for the education of native priests, and since that day they have founded many educational institutions. They have besides a very large number of primary schools, intended originally merely to preserve their converts from too intimate contact with the heathen world, and they have also many higher schools. In those schools they teach modern knowledge, making a speciality of teaching French, which they can do with great efficiency, as many of their number belong to the French nation. In the German sphere of influence there are Catholic schools where German is taught; but though the work is excellent, it cannot be compared with the work of the Americans, who were really the pioneers of higher education in China.

When the American missionaries began to arrive, a new departure was inaugurated in education. The school and college were no longer places where Christians were simply educated; they were places where Christians, confident in the truth of their teaching, gave away to heathen and Christian alike all the knowledge that the West possessed. The conception was bold; it was grand. It showed a statesmanlike grip of the situation and a courage which can only come from a consciousness of the strength of the Christian position, that Christianity was not a narrow religion fearing free inquiry. Christianity, on the contrary, was a religion which could only be appreciated by those who had the very fullest knowledge. These teachers boldly declared that ignorance was the mother of religious error, and therefore the duty of every Christian was at once to remove ignorance and to share with every one the knowledge that can alone make the world capable of truly appreciating God's power as manifested in every department of science.

So these schools and colleges grew up. Those who believed in this policy did not belong to any one denomination, though they did belong to one nation—America. There were many opponents to this policy. It was argued that the duty of the mission bodies was to preach the Gospel, and that however advantageous education might be, it was not the business of the Christian to give it; but whatever doubt there was then, facts have been too strong for those who opposed the educational policy, and any one travelling through China realises more and more how the Mission that has spent money on education is the Mission that has the power of expansion. The Mission that has no educational system is always cabined and confined for want of money and men. They are always writing home to ask that another man shall be sent out; some one has broken down or some new opportunity for work has been opened, and so "they must press upon the Home Board the great importance of sending out at as early a date as possible one or more helpers." The Home Board is always answering those letters, expressing "every sympathy with their anxiety," but in reality pouring cold water on their enthusiasm, and pointing out that the supply of men is limited and that the supply of money is yet more limited. Thus the opportunity passes and the mission cannot expand. The same little church stands filled with converts; the same mission building houses the tired out and climate-stricken white missionaries. Such a mission, while inspiring the greatest respect for the heroism of the missionaries, arouses also a feeling of despair. How is it possible that a mission like this can really solve the problem of making Christianity a national religion? How can spiritual ministrations be performed by aliens, supported by alien money collected from a possibly hostile race?

A very different effect is made on the mind of the onlooker when he comes upon some mission that has made education a speciality. There all is life, vigour and success. One of the most successful of the American missionaries, Bishop Roots, of the Episcopal Church of America, explained the system by which he is succeeding in making Christianity an indigenous religion. At his large college, presided over by Mr. Jackson, many are heathen. Some go through the college and imbibe a certain respect for Christian ethics, which will not only make them a benefit to China but will make an intellectual atmosphere sympathetic to Christian teaching. Some, however, will become Christians who will mostly go out into the world and take their place, and a high place too, in the leadership of the future China, as much owing to the excellence of the teaching that they have received as to the high morality which is produced by their Christian faith. Then there will be a few who will feel a distinct call to go out as missionaries to their own people. These men will have no temptation to become Christians for the loaves and fishes, because, owing to the excellence of the education that they have received and the great prosperity that is dawning over China, they could command a large salary in the open market. These highly-educated clergy are able to go out and put Christianity to the Chinese in a manner which no white man could hope to equal.

What Bishop Roots told me can be well illustrated by two little incidents. In Hankow, where his work is increasing by leaps and bounds, the Lutheran Mission failed, and therefore it resigned the chapel to him. He accepted readily, and soon his Chinese clergy were preaching to crowded congregations. The second incident was this: I expressed a wish to make a present to one of these Christian scholars, and I asked what books he would like to receive. I was told that such books as Balfour's "Defence of Philosophic Doubt" and Haldane's "Pathway to Reality" were the kind that would appeal to such young men. Not only will these men carry the Gospel to their fellow-countrymen far more efficiently than can the alien, but they will to a great extent be able to live on the subscriptions of their congregations, and so the communion to which they belong will become not only self-propagating but self-supporting.

To understand the importance of this controversy the various aims of missionary education must be realised, and it is because those aims are different that the controversy has been confused and the value of education as an assistance to missionary effort in China misunderstood. There are really seven aims: three which are common to all missionary effort in all lands, and four which especially apply to countries like China which are passing through a transitional period of thought. The three which are common to all missionary effort are (1) evangelisation; (2) edification of the Christian body; (3) education of preachers and teachers. The four that are peculiar to China in her present transitional condition are (4) preparation of secular leaders; (5) leavening of the whole public opinion; (6) opposition to Western materialism; (7) association of Christianity with learning.

The arguments for the first three are applicable to every land. Evangelisation can no doubt be carried on most efficiently before the mind has received any intellectual bias. The Jesuit priest is reported to have said, "If I have the child till he is ten, I do not care who has him afterwards;" and therefore, as in all the world so in China, the Roman Catholics have always made a great effort to educate children. They have preferred those who have had no home-ties, orphans and waifs, and have by this policy built up a huge Christian population numbering over a million. This population is thoroughly Christian in sentiment; they have never known an idolatrous atmosphere, and they live to a great extent by themselves in communities. While they are thoroughly Christian, they are also absolutely Chinese; no effort is made to Westernise the children in any way. From this great Christian body Catholic priests are drawn, and I believe so completely Christian are they, that no difference is made between them and white men by such an important body as the Jesuits. When other Christian bodies began missionary work in China they also started schools, but the difference of their schools was that they aimed much more at the second than at the first object. The school was not merely a place to attract homeless children and bring them up as Christians; it was also intended to edify and adorn with knowledge the children of Christians. Non-Christians were largely admitted, but I think that I am right in stating that the object was much more edification than evangelisation. In a corrupt society like China, where all knowledge is intermingled with vice, it is inevitable that Christian schools should be erected for the Christian body, and it is equally inevitable that those who are non-Christians but who admire the schools greatly should try and enter them. The feature of these schools for the most part, though not invariably, in contrast to the earlier Roman Catholic schools, is that Western education is to a certain extent, varying in each mission, superadded to Chinese learning; and therefore, though the school is essentially a school for Chinese learning, the children as a rule learn something also of Western knowledge.

Out of these schools naturally arise others which have the third aim of missionary education as their object, namely, the preparation of preachers and teachers who in the future shall be the real missionary body of China. Every thinking man realises that the alien missionary can only exist in a brief transitional period. The true teachers of a race must be those who are linked to it by ties of blood and tradition, and nearly every mission has therefore set to work to create a native ministry which is sooner or later to take over the task of the conversion of China. This is regarded by many, nay, by most, as the great aim of missionary educational work. The degree of preparation, however, differs widely in different missions. Some missions, drawing their teachers from the lower ranks of society, are quite content to give them an education which will enable them to lead and teach the lower class among whom they move; other missions held that the Christian teacher must not merely he able to lead the ignorant but must be able also to meet in controversy those who may be well equipped with Western knowledge; and therefore while in some missions the education of native pastors is conducted solely in Chinese, in others the teaching is in English, to enable the teachers and preachers to keep abreast with the thought of Western countries and to defend their land by pen and sermon as much against the errors of the West as against the superstition of the East.

It is in the preparation of these highly educated men that an opportunity is given for the fourth aim of missionary education in China: one which would not be applicable in every country, but which is vitally important in China, namely, the preparation of secular leaders in China. To understand the importance of this we must be always reminding our readers that China is in the midst of an intellectual revolution. She is passing through a period which is in some way comparable to the period of the Renaissance in Europe, but which exceeds it both in importance and in danger, because in Europe, as the name shows, it was essentially a reintroduction of forgotten but not new knowledge with its subsequent enlargement and development. In China the revolution is caused by the introduction of foreign knowledge, which is absolutely inharmonious and in many ways opposed to native thought. In Europe the foundations of knowledge were always secure; it was only the superstructure that was altered. In China the very foundations are being uprooted; the result is that China is at the present without leaders, except for a narrow band of men, who owing to the foresight of some Christians in the past have received a Western education. There are plenty of old-fashioned leaders, who have led or failed to lead the sleepy China of years ago—men of considerable ability but in a state of great mental confusion, owing to their powerlessness to comprehend the many aspects of the civilisation which is being forced upon them and which is unnatural to them. They cannot understand our currency questions, our financial operations; they only dimly realise the possibilities and problems connected with military and naval armaments. They yearn for the years gone by, but an inexorable fate urges their country forward into new positions, which bring with them new responsibilities, new powers and new dangers. China demands men to lead her through this terrible state of confusion and change, and she turns round to find the men who understand Western civilisation, who have the character and the knowledge necessary to deal with all these problems. Just at this moment, any man of ability who has an intimate knowledge of Western things stands a chance of high preferment. It may be that this demand will be satisfied by the number of students China has sent abroad to be educated, but the size of China and the great demand for men skilled in Western learning make many of those having a most intimate knowledge of China confident that this is an opportunity that is still open, that it is still possible to direct to some degree the minds and thought of those who will lead China as statesmen, as authors, and as men of learning. The production of these men can be carried on to great advantage in the same establishment as that in which the clergy are receiving their education; the educated clergyman, the future pressmen and statesmen of China are in this way brought in close contact with one another, and even from one establishment the good that may come to China is quite incalculable.

This brings us to the fifth great aim of education, the leavening of public opinion in China so that Christianity will find ground prepared for its sowing. The destruction of superstition, the production of Western ethics make Christianity a reasonable instead of an unreasonable religion to those who hear it preached. Clearly to leaven public opinion influence must be applied to those who will control such powers as those of the press and the school; the teacher and the writer are the men who should be especially aimed at; and to attain this aim, it is necessary to institute and maintain places where higher knowledge is taught rather than only primary schools.

But there is another object, the sixth aim for education in China. One of the unpleasant features in the revolution that is going on in Chinese thought is the present introduction of Western materialism, which to judge by the example in Japan, will grow more rankly after transplantation. The West has a double aspect when seen from the East; it is a Christian world where women are pure and men are honourable; it is a rich world where there are no moral obligations. The first aspect is the one that is represented by the missionary; the second aspect is too often taught by the sailor and merchant classes; and when the Chinaman asks what is the thought and the base of Western teaching, the Japanese materialist, pointing to the example set by many Western lives, declares that Christianity in Europe is like Buddhism in Japan, a religion that at one time had many adherents but whose influence is fast waning, and it is in resisting this materialism that the Missionary College and University perform perhaps their most important task.

The men who are to do this work must be men most highly skilled in Western knowledge; they must understand science and be able to meet a follower of Haeckel in debate, they must be competent to discuss sociology with disciples of Herbert Spencer, and they must not be afraid to dip into the study of comparative religion; in addition, they must be qualified to write excellent Chinese and to be firm in their Christian faith. The production of such men as these should also satisfy the seventh and last aim of Christian education: it will associate learning with Christianity in the minds of the Chinese. The keynote of Chinese thought is its great admiration for learning. In China there is no caste or class, no division except between the ignorant and the learned; if Christianity is associated with ignorance, its influence will be lost, and it is no mean object to make Christianity and knowledge in the mind of the Chinaman two parts of one great idea.

It is obvious that as missionary societies lay weight on one or the other of these objects, they will support a different kind of school. If their object is the first, they will seek to educate the orphan and the waif, and the school and the orphanage will be, as they are in the Roman Catholic body, intimately joined together. If the object is to edify the Christian body and to provide it with a suitable pastor, the missionary body will erect primary schools for Christian children and theological and normal schools to complete their school system. If, on the other hand, the missionary body aims at leavening the whole thought of China, of capturing China for Christ, or if it aims at defending China against the terrible pest of Western materialism—which will turn the light that China now has into black darkness and harden her for ever against Christian teaching—the High School, College, and the University will be the objects on which the money will be spent. This last has been the object of the American bodies; and I think China owes a great debt of gratitude, under God, to the great width of thought and grasp of the situation that the American mind has exhibited.