In his Life of Morrison, Townsend reminds us that the Christian Church early realized that it could not ignore so vast a nation, while its very exclusiveness attracted bold spirits. As far back as the first decade of the sixth century (505 A. D.), Nestorian monks appear to have begun a mission in China. Romance and tragedy are suggested by the few known facts regarding that early movement. Partly impelled by conviction, partly driven by persecution, those faithful souls travelled beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, and rested not till they had made the formidable journey across burning deserts and savage mountains to the land of Sinim. That some measure of success attended their effort is probable. Indeed there are hints in the ancient records of numerous churches and of the favour of the great Emperor Tai Tsung in 635. But however zealous the Nestorians may have been for a time, it is evident that they were finally submerged in the sea of Chinese superstition. A quaint monument, discovered in 1625 at Hsi-an-fu, the capital of Shen-si, on which is inscribed an outline of the Nestorian effort from the year 630 to 781, is the only trace that remains of what must have been an interesting and perhaps a thrilling missionary enterprise.
The Roman Catholic effort began in 1293, when John de Corvino succeeded in reaching Peking. Though he was elevated to an Archbishopric and reinforced by several priests, this effort, too, proved a failure and was abandoned.
Two and a-half centuries of silence followed, and then in 1552, the heroic Francis Xavier set his face towards China, only to be prostrated by fever on the Island of Sancian. As he despairingly realized that he would never be able to set his foot on that still impenetrable land, he moaned: ``Oh, Rock, Rock, when wilt thou open!'' and passed away.
But in 1581, another Jesuit, the learned and astute Matteo Ricci, entered Canton in the guise of a Buddhist priest. He managed to remain, and twenty years later he went to Peking in the dress of a literary gentleman. In him Roman Catholicism gained a permanent foothold in China, and although it was often fiercely persecuted and at times reduced to feebleness, it never became wholly extinct. Gradually it extended its influence until in 1672 the priests reported 300,000 baptized Chinese, including children. In the nineteenth century, the growth of the Roman Church was rapid. It is now strongly entrenched in all the provinces, and in most of the leading cities its power is great. There are twenty-seven bishops and about six hundred foreign priests. The number of communicants is variously estimated, but in 1897 the Vicar Apostolic of Che-kiang, though admitting that he could not secure accurate statistics, estimated the Roman Catholic population at 750,000.
It is not to the credit of Protestantism that it was centuries behind the Roman Church in the attempt to Christianize China. It was not till 1807, that the first Protestant missionary arrived. January 31st, of that year, Robert Morrison, then a youth of twenty-five, sailed alone from London under appointment of the London Missionary Society (Congregational). As the hostile East India Company would not allow a missionary on any of its ships, Morrison had to go to New York in order to secure passage on an American vessel. As he paid his fare in the New York ship owner's office, the merchant said with a sneer: ``And so, Mr. Morrison, you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese Empire?'' ``No, sir,'' was the ringing reply, ``I expect God will.''
The ship Trident left New York about May 15th and did not reach Canton till September 8th. For two years Morrison had to live and study in Canton and the Portuguese settlement of Macao with the utmost secrecy, dreading constantly that he might be forced to leave. For a time, he never walked the streets by daylight for fear of attracting attention, but exercised by night. His own countrymen were hostile to his purpose and his Chinese language teachers were impatient and insolent. It was not till February 20, 1809, the date of his marriage to Miss Morton, that his employment as translator by the East India Company gave him a secure residence. Still, however, he could not do open missionary work, but was obliged to present Christianity behind locked doors to the few Chinese whom he dared to approach. In these circumstances, he naturally gave his energies largely to language study and translation, and in 1810 he had the joy of issuing a thousand copies of a Chinese version of the Book of Acts.
Seven weary, discouraging years passed before Morrison baptized his first convert, July 16, 1814, and even then he had to administer the sacrament at a lonely spot where unfriendly eyes could not look. At his death in 1834, there were only three Chinese Christians in the whole Empire. Successors carried on the effort, but the door was not yet open, and the work was done against many obstacles and chiefly in secret till the treaty of Nanking, in 1842, opened the five ports of Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. Missionaries who had been waiting and watching in the neighbouring islands promptly entered these cities. Eagerly they looked to the great populations in the interior, but they were practically confined to the ports named till 1858, when the treaty of Tien-tsin opened other cities and officially conceded the rights of missionary residence and labour.
The work now spread more rapidly, not only because it was conducted in more centres and by a larger force of missionaries, but because it was carried into the interior regions by Chinese who had heard the gospel in the ports.
The Tai-ping Rebellion soon gave startling illustration of the perversion of the new force. Begun in 1850 by an alleged Christian convert who claimed to have a special revelation from heaven as a younger brother of Christ, it spread with amazing rapidity until in 1853 it had overrun almost all that part of China south of the Yang-tze-kiang, had occupied Nanking and Shanghai, and had made such rapid progress northward that it threatened the capital itself. It was the most stupendous revolution in history, shaking to its foundations a vast and ancient empire, involving the destruction of an almost inconceivable amount of property and, it is said, of the lives of twenty millions of human beings.
If this great rebellion had been wisely guided, it would undoubtedly have changed the history of China and perhaps, by this time, of the greater part of Asia, for it proposed to overthrow idolatry, to unseat the Manchu dynasty, and to found an empire on the principles of the Christian religion. So nearly indeed did it attain success that if it had not been opposed by European nations, it would probably have attained its object. But the weight of their influence was thrown in favour of the Government. The American Frederick T. Ward and the English Charles George Gordon organized and led the ``Ever Victorious Army'' of Chinese troops against the revolutionists. Most significant of all, the leaders of the rebellion itself, freed from the restraint which foreigners might perhaps have exerted, quickly discarded whatever Christian principles they had started with and rapidly demoralized the movement at its centre by giving themselves up to an arrogance, vice, and cruelty which were worse than those of the government they sought to overturn. Mr. McLane, then United States Minister, truly reported to Washington:—