Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

This sort of illusiveness and exaggeration unquestionably belongs to the subject of Christian missions to China. Who does not feel that the high numbers of its dense and far-spread population, amounting perhaps to more than a sixth part of the human family, and the yet unpenetrated veil of mystery which hangs over the origin of the people, and over their actual condition, and even over the geography of the country; and then the singularity of the national character, and the anomalous construction of the language, altogether raise a mist of obscurity which rests in the way of the inquirer who asks—Is the attempt to introduce Christianity among these millions of our brethren utterly vain and visionary?

The natural exaggerations which infest this subject have indeed been sensibly reduced within the last few years: twenty years ago cautious and sagacious Protestants would have thought themselves bound, in deference to common sense, to deride the idea of converting China to the faith of Europe. What the De propaganda, with its store of accommodating measures might attempt, none who must adhere to the guileless methods of Christian instruction would undertake: or even if an enterprise of this sort were commenced, it must be allowed a date of five hundred years for achieving any considerable success! But better information, and the actual accomplishment of the initiatory process, must now, by the least sanguine minds, be deemed greatly to have lessened the improbabilities of such an attempt, and to have shortened the date of our Christian hopes. What has been accomplished of late by the assiduity, and the intellectual vigor, and the moral intrepidity of a few individuals, has turned the beam of calculation; and it is now rational to talk of that which, very recently, might not have been named, except among visionaries.

The brazen gate of China, sculptured with inscrutable characters, and bolted and barred, as it seemed, against western ingenuity—the gate of its anomalous language, has actually been set wide open; and although the ribbon of despotic interdiction is still stretched across the highway that leads to the popular mind, access, to some extent, has been obtained; and who shall affirm that this frail barrier insurmountable as it may now seem, shall at all times, during another fifty years, exist, and be respected? Within even a much shorter term, is it not probable, that revolutions of dynasty, or popular commotions, may suspend or divert, for a moment, the vigilance of jealous ignorance? In some such manner it may be supposed that, the means of diffusing religious knowledge being, as they are, accumulated, and headed up above the level of the plains of China, the dam bursting, or falling into decay, the healing flood of Christian truth shall suffuse itself in all directions over the vast surface.

But we are told that the national intellect is spellbound in a condition of irremediable imbecility. The people, it is said, have no ideas but such as are fixed under the petrifactions of their ancient usages; or even if they had a mind in which ideas might float, they have no medium of communication, or none which can take up even an atom of knowledge or of sentiment that is of foreign growth. How then shall such a people be converted to Christianity? Were it not as well to attempt to inform and persuade the sculptures of Elephanta, or the glazed images of their own pottery? To all this show of impossibility, a full and sufficient reply is contained in a single affirmation of Scripture, not less philosophically just than it is beautiful and sublime—"The Lord looketh from heaven, he beholdeth all the sons of men: from the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth: he fashioneth their hearts alike."

The old doctrine that there are certain generic and invincible inferiorities of intellect which must forever bar the advancement of some branches of the human family, has of late received so signal a refutation in the instance of the African race—long and pertinaciously consigned by interested philosophers to perpetual degradation—that it now hardly needs to be argued against. And assuredly, if the negro cranium is found, spite of phrenologists, to admit of mathematical abstraction, fine taste, and fine feeling, it will not be affirmed that the skull of the Tartar or Chinese must necessarily exclude similar excellences. To assert, either that nature has conferred no physical superiorities, favorable to the development of mind, on particular races, or to maintain that the comparative disadvantages of some nations are so great and unalterable as to constitute impassable barriers in the way of civilization, is equally a quackery which history and existing facts condemn, and which nothing but the love of theory or simplification could ever recommend to an intelligent observer of mankind. With the uniform evidence of history before us, it may well be assumed as probable that certain races will always retain the intellectual pre-eminence they have acquired; nor is it at all less reasonable to suppose that every tribe, even the most degraded, is intrinsically capable of whatever is essential to a state of social order and moral dignity.

If the lowest degree of proficiency in the mechanical arts is justly held to give proof of the existence of those powers of abstraction whence, with proper culture, the sciences may take their rise, so, with equal certainty, may we infer a susceptibility of the religious emotions from even the feeblest indications of the moral sense. When a people diffused over so extensive a surface, and so thickly covering that surface, is seen to submit itself intelligently to the patriarchal form of government, which implies the constant and powerful influence of a moral abstraction, and a vivid sense of unseen power, no doubt can remain of its capacity to admit the motives of Christian faith.

The Chinese are what they are, more from the natural consequence of having sustained, during many successive generations, what may be termed national imprisonment, than from the operation of any physical disabilities. So complete and successful an interdiction of intercourse with strangers has not been known to take place in any other country; and a closer fitting of the restraints of custom and etiquette upon the manners than has elsewhere been effected, has not failed to impart to the national character that peculiar gait—if the phrase maybe used—which must distinguish one who had been released from his swaddling-bands only to be encumbered with a chain, and had worn that chain through life. Of the Chinese people it may truly be said that "the iron hath entered into their soul."

But even without resting upon the probability of the subversion of the existing despotism, the defeat of its jealous precautions may be anticipated as what must at length result from the present course of events. That portion of the Chinese population which may be termed the extra-mural, and which, in numbers, exceeds some European nations, may be considered as the depository of the happy destinies of the empire; for these expatriate millions are accessible to instruction; and if once they become, to any considerable extent, alive to religious truth, no prohibitions of paternal despotism will avail to exclude the new principles from the mother country. It is a false feeling that would draw discouragement from the comparative diminutiveness and small actual results of the operations that are carrying on for imparting Christianity to this people. These measures ought, in philosophical justice, to be viewed as the commencements of an accelerative movement, acting incessantly upon an inert mass, which, by the very laws of nature, must at length receive impulse enough to be carried forward in the course of the propelling cause. To be assured of this result, all that we need is to be assured of the continuance of the spring of movement.

If the several spheres of missionary labor are reviewed, none, it is presumed, can be deemed to offer more serious obstacles than the one already referred to; or if there be one such, yet have fact and experiment already given a full reply to all objections. May it be permitted to say that a voice from heaven, full of meaning, is heard in the particular character of the successes, how limited soever they may be, which have crowned the incipient attempts to convert the heathen? The veriest reprobates of civilization and social order have been the first to be brought in to grace the triumphs of the Gospel in its recent attempts at foreign conquest; as if at once to solve all doubts, and to refute all cavils, relating to the practicability and promise of the enterprise. If it had been thought or affirmed that the stupefaction and induration of heart produced upon a race by ages of uncorrected ferocity and sensuality must repel forever the attempts of Christian zeal, it is shown, in the instance of the extremest specimens that could have been selected, that a few years only of beneficent skill and patience are enough to transform the fierce and voluptuous savage into a being of pure, and gentle, and noble sentiments; that within a few years all the domestic virtues, and even the public virtues, graced with the decencies of rising industry, may occupy the very spots that were recking with human blood, and with the filthiness of every abomination which the sun blushes to behold.

If one islet only of the Southern Ocean had cast away its idols and its horrific customs, if one hamlet only of the Negro or Hottentot race had become Christian, there would have been no more place left on which the objector against missions could rest his cavils; for the problem of the conversion of the heathen would have been satisfactorily solved. But in truth, these happy and amazing revolutions have taken place with such frequency, and under so great a diversity of circumstance, and in front of so many obstacles, that instead of asking whether barbarous nations may be persuaded to forsake their cruel delusions, it may with more propriety be asked—if anything can prevent the progress of such reforms universally, where Christian zeal and wisdom perseveringly perform their part.