The Chinese, on the other hand, have an autochthon civilisation of which they are justly proud. Five hundred years before Christ came into the world—when the inhabitants of these islands were hopeless savages clad in skins, or stained with woad according to the seasons, if the old stories be true—Confucius was teaching respect for customs which were already ancient. Since his day there have been thirteen changes of capital and no fewer than thirty dynasties, but even when Tartar[1] emperors have sat upon the Dragon Throne they have been compelled to follow the rules of the Chinese, and civilisation has remained what it was “under the shadow” of the great Teacher. No wonder that the son of Han thinks a good many times before he will scatter his past to the four winds of heaven, as the Japanese did without a sigh!
In one sense the mandarins have been wiser in their generation than the men who made the Japanese revolution of 1868. These were the daimios, such men as Satsuma, Tosa, Choshiu, and their karôs (elders or councillors), who thinking to overthrow the Tycoon and his rule, were blind to the fact that in so doing they were working their own downfall as well as his. For they, no less than he, were the embodiment of the feudal system. Where are they now? Où sont les neiges d’antan? They have vanished, and their places are filled by a mushroom growth of dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons. For Japan has stopped short at nothing; not content with adopting the cocked hat, which as we all know is the very marrow of all good government, giving the entrée to the comity of nations, she has actually invented a full and complete peerage. Far more astute is the mandarin. Such wily anachronisms as Li Hung Chang and his compeers know full well that under the sun of Western civilisation they must melt away, and it is no matter for surprise that they die hard. All the myriads of officials, from the highest to the lowest, swarming like ants over that vast empire, are alive to the fact that their very existence depends on keeping up a constant animosity against the Hung Kwei Tzŭ, the red devils. That has always appeared to me as the keynote of the situation.
Various causes are commonly assigned for the fanaticism against foreigners, which has from time to time broken out with fatal consequences in different parts of China. Some blame missionary enterprise; some commerce in general; others the opium trade in particular. My belief is that it is due to neither of these in itself, but to the dread of reform which haunts the official mind, and which in the end must win its way.
The Chinese are not by nature a people of strong religious convictions, nor have they any strong religious antipathies. If it were otherwise, how is it that a colony of Jews[2] has dwelt among them unmolested for two thousand years, and still remains, dwindling in numbers, it is true, at Kai Fêng in the province of Ho Nan? How is it that the Mohammedans have flourished exceedingly in certain provinces, even to becoming a danger to the empire? On the walls of the Imperial palace at Peking there is a pavilion richly decorated with Arabic inscriptions from the Koran in honour of a Mohammedan lady who was a wife, or favourite, of one of the emperors. This does not look like persecution for religion’s sake. And, more than these, Buddhism? Ever since the Emperor Ming Ti dreamt a dream, nearly nineteen centuries ago, and sent for Buddhist books and images to China, Buddhism has been the popular religion, as Confucianism is the popular school of moral philosophy. Tao-ism, the native religion of Lao Tsŭ, cannot hold its own with it. Troublous days, indeed, it has gone through at various times, but it has outlived them, and now, to quote Dr. Morrison, “Buddhism in China is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed by all.” (See further Wells Williams, ut suprà.)
Why, then, this tolerance in certain cases, side by side with the cruellest intolerance where Christianity is concerned? If it is not religious conviction, it must be political antipathy. And there is the rub. The bitter hatred of Christianity is not inborn in the people, who have in many instances, indeed, shown a sort of limp willingness, not altogether unconnected with better wages, to embrace its tenets; but the hostility is bred, fostered, and fomented by the mandarins to whom it means the end of their rule. Under a Christian dispensation the whole tottering fabric of their power must inevitably fall to the ground. The poor Jews were to them a negligible quantity. The Mohammedan creed, the sacred book of which may not be translated, presents for that reason but small terrors to the lettered class, though we hear of an old prophecy to the effect that there will be a great Mohammedan revolution, and that a Hui-Hui (Mohammedan) dynasty shall rule over China. Buddhism, on the other hand, except in Tibet, aims at no temporal power, and even there the Chinese Emperor is the Suzerain. But Christianity is a very real terror, to be put down at any cost, however bloody. And yet, strange to say, there was a time when it seemed as if it were destined to conquer everything and to become the state religion. Internal dissensions and ambitions amongst its sects alone stopped its course.
The history of the early missions to China is full of interest; it is not possible, however, to do more than glance at it here. Putting on one side the dim legend that St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, was the first to preach the Gospel to the Chinese, there is no doubt that missionaries did visit them in very remote ages. It was two Nestorian monks who carried the first Eastern silkworms’ eggs to Justinian in the sixth century (see my Bamboo Garden, pp. 31–33). It is strange at the present time to read how at the end of the thirteenth century John of Monte Corvino was sent by Pope Nicholas the Fourth to the court of Kublai Khan at Kambaluk (the ancient name of Peking); how he was kindly entreated there, building a church “which had a steeple and belfry, with three bells that were rung every hour to summon the new converts to prayer”; how he baptized nearly six thousand persons during that time, “and bought one hundred and fifty children, whom he instructed in Greek and Latin, composing for them several devotional books.” Clement the Fifth made him an archbishop, and sent him seven suffragan bishops. He died full of years in 1328, “having converted more than thirty thousand infidels.” All Kambaluk is said to have mourned for him, Christians and heathen rending their garments at his funeral, and his tomb became the resort of pious pilgrims. This account, which will be found given at length in the third volume of the Chinese Repository, is probably not a little exaggerated; but even discounting it largely, it is very striking as an evidence of devotion on the one side and toleration on the other. “It is now twelve years,” he wrote, “since I have heard any news of the west. I am become old and gray-headed, but it is rather through labours and tribulations than through age, for I am only fifty-eight years old. I have learned the Tartar language and literature, into which I have translated the whole New Testament and the Psalms of David, and have caused them to be transcribed with the utmost care. I write and read and preach openly and freely the testimony of the law of God.” Until the year 1368, when the Yuan or Tartar dynasty was driven out by the Chinese, and the Ming Emperors ruled first at Nanking and afterwards at Peking, Dr. Williams says “there is no reasonable doubt that the greater part of Central Asia and Northern China was the scene of many flourishing Christian communities.” From that time forth, during upwards of two hundred years, they dwindled away so that nothing more was heard of them.
It was at the end of the sixteenth century that the Jesuits first began to exercise an influence which was very nearly overwhelming all rivalry in China. Saint François Xavier, the gospeller of India and Japan, had marked China as the special field of his future labours, but he died of fever at the island of Shang Chuen, near Macao, being only forty-six years old at the time of his death—a wonderful man, truly! But his work was destined to fall into hands no less competent for the task than his own.
Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit father, was born at Macerata, in the Papal States, in 1552. At the age of nineteen he was sent to Rome to study law, which career he quickly abandoned, to his father’s great displeasure, to enter the Society of Jesus. Here he came under the orders of Father Valignani, the Inspector-General of Eastern Missions, with whom, before he had even finished his noviciate, he went to India, continuing his studies at Goa, where he became professor of philosophy. In 1580 he followed Father Ruggiero to Macao, where the two priests gave themselves up to the study of the Chinese language. They availed themselves of the trading privileges of the Portuguese to visit Canton, and some two years later, not without encountering some difficulties and disappointments, they obtained the permission of the Viceroy of Kwang Tung to build a house at Shao Ching Fu, and a church. Ricci soon saw that a reputation for learning was then, as now, the only passport to high consideration among the lettered classes. He published a map of China and a catechism, in which he set forth the moral teaching of Christianity, excluding carefully all that pertains to the doctrines of revealed religion. He had his reward, for many learned men came to consult him, and his fame spread far and wide. For some years the Jesuit fathers adopted the garments of Buddhist priests, but finding that these were treated with anything but respect, they, upon the advice of Father Valignani, dropped the yellow robes and assumed the garb of the men of letters, whom above all it was their wise endeavour to conciliate. Ricci paid three visits to Nanking, but on the second occasion he was expelled, and forced to go to Nanchang, where he established a school and published two treatises, the Art of Memory and a Dialogue on Friendship. This last work was a marvellous success, for it became famous not only “for the loftiness of its thoughts, but even for the purity of its style,” a feat perhaps unique in a country where literary style is so much thought of, and so difficult to attain, even by native scholars. In the year 1600 he achieved his ambition of going to Peking charged with presents for the Emperor Wan Li from the Portuguese at Macao. But the mission was not accomplished without difficulty. A eunuch of the court had offered himself as his escort, and with him Ricci set out in a native junk. But the presents of which he was the bearer had aroused the cupidity of the eunuch, who contrived to imprison Ricci and his companion Pantoja at Tientsing for six months. Happily the affair came to the ears of the Emperor, who ordered him to be released and brought to Peking, where he was kindly received by Wan Li, who assigned him a house and salary. Ricci soon made many friends and converts, of whom one named Sü helped him in the translation of Euclid. His secret of success was being all things to all men, and he contrived so to edit Christianity as to make it fit in with existing manners and customs, and to give offence to none. Among other things he allowed the rites of ancestral worship to be continued, affecting to consider them as being of a civil and not of a religious character. In short, he followed the Buddhist system of incorporating, not condemning, those articles of native faith to have fought against which would have been fatal to his schemes. Father Ricci died in 1610, being fifty-eight years of age. If, on account of the laxity of his theological concessions, he cannot be called a great Christian missionary, he was at any rate a great conciliator, and it was no fault of his that the seed which he successfully sowed did not bring forth good fruit. He was possessed of rare talents, his learning was conspicuous in many branches, and his winning charm of manner commended him to the favour of high and low. He was perhaps the only European who ever acquired the Chinese literary style to such a degree as to call forth the admiration of native critics. To such an extent was this recognised, that about 150 years after his death his treatise on The True Doctrine of God, revised by a minister of state named Sin, was included in the collection of the best Chinese works made by the order of the Emperor Chien Lung.
To follow a man so various and so plastic as Ricci was no easy task; but the Society of Jesus has never been wanting in men possessed at any rate of the latter quality, and Father Longobardi proved an efficient successor, though he did not make history. But there were troubles in store for the missionaries. Their successes aroused the jealousies of courtiers and officials, whose intrigues led to the publication of an edict banishing the Christian teachers. This decree, however, was never carried into effect. They had made many converts who protected them, and foremost among these were Sü (Ricci’s special friend) and his daughter, christened under the name of Candida. These two Chinese converts were so famous for their virtues and so beloved for their charity, that they are actually worshipped to this day by the people at Shanghai, and the Roman Catholic Mission at Sü Chia Wei, near that city, occupies the property once held by the Christian Sü. Candida was indeed a saintly woman. She built no fewer than thirty-nine churches; she published upwards of one hundred books; she established a foundling hospital for babies whom, then as now, their unnatural parents were in the habit of abandoning; and she employed the blind improvisatori of the streets to substitute Gospel stories for their obscenities and inanities. The Emperor himself conferred upon her the title of “The Virtuous Woman,” and sent her a robe and headgear embroidered with pearls, which she stripped off to further her religious works with their price.
The beginning of the seventeenth century was a time of internal trouble and revolution in China. The old Chinese dynasty of the Mings was about to be replaced by the present Tartar dynasty, the Chi̔ng. That the Jesuits had become a real power in the land is proved by the fact that the claimant to the Ming throne was supported by the missionaries, his troops being led by two native Christian generals, Kiu who was called Thomas, and Chin who was baptized Luke. His mother, wife, and son were christened as Helena, Maria, and Constantine, and Helena went so far as to write to Pope Alexander VII. “expressing her attachment to the cause of Christianity, and wishing to put the country, through him, under the protection of God”! (Wells Williams).