``Extreme indeed would be the danger if, popular indignation having been once aroused by this opposition to the authorities, the hatred of the whole population of China were excited like that of the people of Tientsin against foreigners, and orders, though issued by the Government, could not be for all that put in force. . . . Although the creeds of the various foreign countries differ in their origin and development from each other, the natives of China are unable to see the distinction between them. In their eyes all (teachers of religion) are `missionaries from the West,' and directly they hear a lying story (about any of these missionaries), without making further and minute inquiry (into its truth), they rise in a body to molest him.''
As for Protestant missionaries, it would be useless to assert that every one of the 2,950 has always been blameless in this matter. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that there is a sense in which the gospel is a revolutionary force. Christ Himself said that He came not to send peace on earth but a sword, and to set a man at variance against his father. There is usually more or less of a protest in a heathen land when a man turns from the old faith to the new one. The refusal to contribute to the temple sacrifices and to worship the ancestral tablets is sure to be followed by a furious outcry. The convert is apt to be assailed as a traitor to the national custom and as having entered into league with the foreigner.
To the Chinese, moreover, all white men are ``Christians'' and ``foreign devils,'' and all alike stand for the effort to foreignize and despoil China. Except where personal acquaintance has taught certain communities that there is a difference between white men, the evil acts of one foreigner or of one aggressive foreign Government are charged against all the members of the race, just as in the pioneer days in the American colonies, a settler whose wife had been killed by an Indian took his revenge by indiscriminately shooting all the other Indians he could find. Any hatred that the Chinese may have against Christianity is due, not so much to its religious teachings, as to its identification with the foreign nations whose religion Christianity is supposed to be and whose aggressions the Chinese have so much reason to fear and to hate.
For this reason, the introduction of Buddhism and Mohammedanism is not parallel, and to base an argument against Christianity on the alleged fact that the other faiths easily succeeded in domesticating themselves in China is to confuse facts. Neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism entered China as an aggressive propaganda by foreigners. The Chinese themselves brought in Buddhism, and it spread chiefly because it grafted into itself many Chinese superstitions and did not oppose Chinese vices, but rather assimilated them. Why should the people have opposed a religion which interfered with nothing that they valued and reenforced their darling prejudices? As for Islam, we have already seen[75] that it is the faith of early immigrants and their descendants, that its followers do not propagate it, that they live in separate communities, are disliked by the Chinese and are often at open war with them. Christianity, on the contrary, comes to China with foreigners who have no intention of settling down as permanent members of Chinese society, who are classed as representatives of nations which are regarded as more or less hostile and unjust, and who preach their religion as a vital spiritual faith which opposes all wrong, uproots all superstition and aims at the moral reconstruction of every man. Of course, therefore, Christianity must expect a reception different in some respects from that which was given to Buddhism and Mohammedanism.
[75] Chapter VI.
It is the shallowest of all objections to missions that Mr. Francis Nichols urged in the North American Review when he insisted that ``the missionary is not engaged to be a reformer,'' but that ``his mission is to preach the gospel— nothing more.''
``Is the gospel then simply a patent arrangement by which idolaters can get to heaven, without disturbing their idolatry or the vices associated with it? was not Christ a reformer? and Paul also, and his successors, who, by their preaching, gave the idols of Rome to the moles and the bats, and robbed the Coliseum of its gladiatorial shows? It is the glory of Christianity that on questions of truth and righteousness it makes no compromise. Its mission is to save the world by reforming it…. Who that understands the genius of Christianity can fail to see that China Christianized must be very different from China as it now is?''[76]
[76] The Rev. Dr. Calvin Mateer, Teng chou.
After making all due allowance for these things, however, the fact still remains that opposition of this sort in China is usually local and sporadic. It affects a greater or less number of individuals and families and occasionally a community, but it does not move a whole population to the frenzy of a national uprising. The anti-foreign hatred of the Boxers was fierce in thousands of cities and villages where there were no missionaries or Chinese Christians at all. In the sphere of religion proper, the Chinese are not an intolerant people. They are almost wholly devoid of sec- tarian spirit. The coming of another religion would not of itself excite serious opposition, for having become accustomed to the presence and intermingling of several religions, it would not antecedently occur to the Chinese that a fourth faith would involve the abandonment of the others. They would be more apt to infer that the new could be accepted in harmony with the old in the established way. So the worst foe that the Christian missionary has to encounter is not hostility but indifference.
As a rule, the Chinese have not strenuously objected to the Protestant missionaries as missionaries. It is the policy of the mission boards to avoid all unnecessary interference with native customs. So far from coveting official equality with Chinese magistrates, an overwhelming majority of the Protestant missionaries throughout the Empire expressly declined to avail themselves of the offer of the Chinese Government to give them the same privileges and official status that was accorded to the Roman Catholic priests and bishops in the Imperial decree of March 15, 1899.