Last year, it was estimated that the whole number of Protestant Christian converts in China, the result of more than thirty years of missionary labour, was some 1,400, and these included all the employées of the different mission establishments, many of whom, I have good reason to know, have an amount of faith similar to that of the Portuguese rice Christians of Macao, who, not long since, struck in a body, and told the priests they would not be Christians any longer, unless they received another quarter of a catty more rice per day. England sends more missionaries amongst the poor benighted heathen than any other nation; yet the work of all she has sent to China put together will not equal the proselytes of one Jesuit. The Jesuits penetrate the vast Chinese empire in every direction, shaven-headed, and dressed as natives. With a sublime earnestness of purpose, many of them devote their lives to their missionary work; adopting the strange and hostile country, and giving up for ever all ties of home, kindred, or nation, these devoted men never depart from China, but, till death relieves them, labour with that unfaltering perseverance so eminently characteristic of the order of Jesus. I do not, by any means, advocate either the principles of the Jesuits, or their peculiar mode of propagating them; but what I do maintain is, that while the self-sacrifice of the Jesuits forms one extreme of missionary labour, so the confinement of Protestant missionaries to the treaty ports constitutes the other, and that many could be well employed in the interior.
What excuse can missionaries give for their surprising negligence of the Ti-ping rebellion? Can it be that ministers of the Gospel egotistically preferred their 1,400 converts to the 70,000,000, and upwards, of those who might have become Christians under the Ti-ping authority during 1861-2, had our missionaries helped them, and our Government permitted them to exist? Of course not! Well then, why? Let the British officials who prevented the few missionaries who would have gone to the Ti-pings reply for them, and those who would not go at all reply for themselves. Their reasons must indeed be plausible to find approbation. If the Ti-pings were very bad, all the more occasion for teaching them; if very good, how is it the missionaries allowed them to be sacrificed without protest? In all probability no reply would be given; but the conduct of the British consuls at Canton, Ningpo, and Shanghae, affords the true answer, as far as those missionaries who were willing to preach the Gospel to the Ti-pings are concerned. At Canton they were refused passports to the territory of insurgents. At Ningpo the missionaries were withdrawn from that city when it was captured by the Ti-pings, as Mr. Consul Hervey states in his despatch of Dec. 31st, 1861, to Mr. Bruce:—
"I would here state that with a view of avoiding needless discussions with the insurgents.... I thought it best to desire our missionaries to abandon the city.... The city has now become a gigantic camp, and a scene of desolation and riot, and has therefore ceased to be the fit and proper abode for teachers of Christianity and propagators of the gospel. (?) This step will tend to simplify considerably our future relations with the Taepings at Ningpo."
This sinister passage must be remembered when considering the treacherous expulsion of the Ti-pings from the city by the allied Anglo-Franco-Manchoo piratical fleet.
Do the subscribers to the mission funds expect Mr. Consul Hervey to be the director of the missionaries, or a competent judge of "a fit or proper abode for teachers of Christianity"?—if so, in the latter case they are wofully deceived.
Captain Corbett, R.N., writes to Admiral Hope from Ningpo on the 20th December, 1861:—
"The missionaries are gradually removing out of the city. I thought it my duty to remonstrate with them against remaining where, in the event of any difficulty arising between ourselves and the Taepings, they would prove a source of great embarrassment to us."
Why all this anxiety to force the missionaries away from their duty? To get them out of the way before the commencement of the hostilities already decided upon, seems the only answer!
At Shanghae Mr. Consul Medhurst has interfered with the missionary work; but, above all, Mr. Bruce's regulations actually prohibit the communication of missionaries or any other British subject with the Ti-pings; in consequence of which, I was compelled to smuggle the Rev. W. Lobschied up to Nankin in May, 1862.
It will thus be seen, the teaching of the Word of God, and the spreading of the Gospel unto the uttermost ends of the earth, has, in China, been made subservient to official intrigue. This may somewhat explain the extraordinary apathy of missionaries, although it certainly cannot justify their neglect of their Master's orders. Missionaries should be servants of Christ alone; but out in China, it appears, they are either politicians, or they permit the object of their sacred mission to be perverted by unscrupulous officials, and thereby become secularized.