A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

It was pleasant to perceive that American enterprise and administration have transformed Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, from a medieval into a modern city. Its newly constructed streets and pavements, water-works and drainage, electricity and the trolley, have turned this old and dilapidated Spanish town into a place of order and beauty. Its parks and gardens, its municipal buildings and hospitals, are an object-lesson to all beholders. The walls of the fort still remain, but the moat has been filled up. The Roman Catholic Cathedral shows the large designs of a former priesthood to capture the people by architecture and ceremonial. But Protestant churches, missions, and schools, are coming to have the first place in popular esteem. The former palace of the Spanish governor is now the meeting-place of the democratic legislature, and the Jones Bill, recently passed by our Congress, but now locally known as "the Bill Jones," has given hopes of a complete and speedy Filipino independence.

Our observation of the place, and our intercourse with residents of Manila, lead us to doubt the wisdom of our immediate relinquishment of authority over these islands. Eager as are the Filipino leaders for self-government, they have not yet learned the art of self-restraint. The recent trouble in the great hospital illustrates this. Its American superintendent has resigned his office, for the reason that his Filipino staff and subordinates conspired to make discipline and sanitary regulations impossible. They desired to manage the institution themselves, when they were incompetent to enforce cleanliness and order. What happens in hospital work happens also in all branches of civil administration. It will take a whole generation to raise up officials who can be trusted to do their work for the public good, rather than to provide comfortable and remunerative positions for themselves.

We visited the spot, five miles away, where our American troops, under Admiral Dewey, landed to besiege the town. We motored to Fort McKinley also, where our soldiers still command the situation. But our main interest was in the mission schools and in the interdenominational theological seminary. In these educational institutions all the instruction is in the English language. They are Americanizing as well as evangelizing the population. The establishment of universal and compulsory school attendance will in a few years turn a Spanish-speaking into an English-speaking people, and will unify the education and the civilization of the islands. Nothing indeed is more remarkable in the Orient than the gradual superseding of the native dialects by the printed and spoken English. In the great country of India, it is to be remembered, English is the required language in school and court, as well as in every government office. Even the Romanizing of written Chinese and Japanese will make vastly easier the political unity and the religious evangelization of China and Japan.

When we reached Singapore, we found ourselves in one of the world's greatest ports of entry. It is also one of the keys to the Orient, as Sir Thomas Raffles perceived more than a century ago. Its splendid government buildings and its strong fortifications show that the British propose to hold it to the end. The recent incipient revolt, which was fortunately nipped in the bud when it seemed to the conspirators on the verge of success, and which was punished by the summary execution of thirty or forty rebels without the news of it getting into the papers, showed that Germany had much to hope for and Britain much to fear from the unrest of these heterogeneous populations. I had a vivid reminder of all this at the Methodist Episcopal Mission, where I found over sixteen hundred scholars in attendance, and where I addressed five hundred of them at their morning prayers. One of the chief difficulties of Christian work in Singapore is the aggregation and mixture of races. Seven different nationalities are represented in the schools. The Tamil, the Malay, and the Chinese are the most numerous, and of these the Chinese take the lead. Fifty thousand Chinese immigrants enter the port of Singapore every year, mainly because there is employment for them in the rubber plantations of the Straits Settlements. The congestion of population in China drives them southward to Singapore, and from Singapore they swarm northward to Burma, southward to Java, and westward to India.

This mixing up of the many different nationalities makes it impossible for the missions in Singapore to teach their pupils in any other language than the English. This requisition of English seems to some of the people a slur upon their own tongue, and a sign of British ascendency. They are jealous of the English, even while they perceive their own dependence upon them. Only British justice and watchfulness can keep in check the disposition to revolt on the part of some classes with which the government has to deal, especially when these classes are stirred up by German spies and German money. Thus far all seditious attempts have been put down, and the traveler learns to bless the wisdom of British administration, and to rest secure and confident under the folds of the Union Jack.

We left Singapore for Penang with some regret, for the reason that large steamers must be exchanged for small steamers. The one we took was exceedingly good and modern. Another on which we embarked somewhat later seemed to have come down from the days of Noah and the ark. But British steamers, however old and small, are clean and safe. You "get there" all the same. On our way to Rangoon our first stop was at Port Swetterham, from which we motored twenty-seven miles to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federated Malay States—federated under the British Crown. Here is a city of Malays and Chinese, with British government buildings, Mohammedan mosques, Buddhist temples, an English cathedral, and a Methodist church. Our road thither led us through seemingly endless forests of rubber trees and of coconut palms. The profusion of tropical vegetation was both novel and impressive. These Federated Malay States furnish the world with more than half its supply of rubber, and many English and American investors are growing rich from the soaring of prices induced by the war.

Penang, however, furnished us with our greatest sensation. It was a Chinese funeral. In this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, a millionaire Chinese banker had died. He was a Buddhist as well as a Confucianist, but also a loyal and patriotic supporter of charitable institutions, and of the British rule. He had given to the British government a number of aeroplanes to facilitate its military operations, and a large sum of money for its war-loan. When he died, the customary worship of ancestors, which is a part of Chinese religion, as well as gratitude for his past gifts, prompted his family to plan a sumptuous funeral. It is said to have cost them thirty thousand dollars. We arrived in Penang just in time to see the show. All the way from Singapore, indeed, we were accompanied on our steamer by a fine brass band, which was only one of three brass bands hired to furnish music for the funeral service.

My powers of description fail, when I attempt to tell the wonders of a funeral procession fully a half mile long. It was headed by a symbolic float of waxwork figures, in which a colossal horse, prancing on its hind legs, seemed just about to soar into the air. The horse was held in by four angelic forms following and holding in their hands scepters of royalty. This apparition reminded me of the horses and chariot in which Elijah ascended to heaven, and it seemed to indicate that the deceased had departed with all the honors heaven and earth could bestow. A band of music accompanying the float, and playing solemn but not mournful strains, gave color to this interpretation. A retinue of sedan-chairs, decorated with all the colors of the rainbow, came next in order. These sedan-chairs were empty of occupants, and contained long strips of red paper on which were written the names and merits of the millionaire's ancestors, to be read by Buddhist priests at the grave. The chairs were each the gift of some relative or friend of the departed. They symbolized the welcome given him by those who had gone before him to the better land. A second band of music was followed by a body-guard of British soldiers in khaki, deputed by the British governor to show his estimate of the character and loyalty of the deceased.

Then came the hearse, if hearse it could be called. It was really an enormous catafalque, decorated with gold tinsel and costly embroideries. Peacocks and birds of paradise were depicted on its silken hangings. A dozen men, in elaborate robes of blue, carried this gaudy structure upon their shoulders, while other gorgeously attired attendants bore great ribbon-banners of satin, say twenty feet long by four feet wide and of the most brilliant colors, inscribed with Chinese characters and making known the virtues of the departed. But the most curious part of the procession, was yet to come. Preceded by the third band of music were the offerings of food and drinks which were to furnish sustenance to the spirit in the world into which he had now entered. There were six roasted sucking-pigs, laid in order, on portable tables, with baskets of rice, oranges, bananas, all kinds of fruit and confectionery, and cups of tea and wines. These were carried to the cemetery, to be presented to the departed spirit at the grave, then jealously guarded for an interval, finally in part given to the officiating priests, and in part consumed at a feast held by the surviving members of the family. The costlier the offerings, the better would the feast be enjoyed. There was no lack of priests in this ceremonial. They were young and clean-shaven, and looked as if they had enlisted for this very service. I thought I could discern a sly twinkle in their eyes, as they inspected the preparations for the feast, before the march began.

The mourners must not be forgotten. Among the Chinese, white, and not black, is the appointed sign of mourning. The four wives of the deceased and the members of his family were accordingly dressed in the coarsest of white sackcloth, with ashes sprinkled over their faces, and they walked behind the hearse, howling. It was a piteous spectacle, reminding one of the professional and hired wailers in Palestine, where "the mourners go about the streets," uttering dismal lamentations which can be bought for money. Far be it from me to suggest that such was the lamentation which we heard that day, for there is reason to believe that in this case the deceased was respected and beloved.