Catholic missions began in China when by caravan Corvina visited Kublai Khan, at Peking, in 1292 A. D. Ricci arrived at Canton in 1582 and worked in many of the provincial capitals and at Macao and Peking. Schaal worked from 1622 to 1664 and had influence with the greatest and most artistic Manchu emperor, Kang Hi. Abbé Huc covered the country from Peking and Tibet to Macao from 1844 onward. The chief educational centers of the Romanists are at Peking, Tientsin, Canton, Macao, Saigon and Hongkong. The large press and college of the Missiones d’Etrangeres is at Hongkong (Aberdeen side of the island). At Peking is their extensive Pei Tang press. They have large, two-spired Gothic cathedrals at Canton, Peking, etc. The square towered cathedral on Caine Road, Hongkong, is the architectural crown of the lovely colony. The Catholics number 1,500,000, their work being strong in orphanages, among women, etc., and in comparison with Protestant missions very weak in higher education and the distributed Bible itself. They consider it expedient to train the child rather than to make the expensive experiment of reasoning with and educating the man. Therefore most of the modernized Chinese officials are Protestants. Naturally the Catholic method brings more converts than does the Protestant.
The American missions almost dominate in the expensive higher education of the land, and it now seems certain that American educational methods, thoroughly tried in China, will be adopted over the world because of their efficiency and altruism. The Protestant missions of Europe, working in China, are as follows: The Scandinavians work in Hupeh and the northern provinces, and while not rich, they have developed effective fearless men of great resource. The German Lutherans are active at Kiaochou, and in the north and the Yangtze valley. The English Baptists, dating back to 1792, have many missions, notably in Shangtung province. The London Missionary Society (mainly Congregational), dating back to 1795, operates largely along the coast, in the south, and at Peking. The Church of Scotland (both Free and Established), which is strong in medical missions, operates notably in Manchuria. The Presbyterian and Methodist Churches of England have many missions throughout the land. The Anglican Church operates chiefly in the great ports; is now strong in higher education, and has erected many fine cathedrals. It has taken under its wing the foreigner in China, who, Kipling charged, did many reckless things “east of Suez!” Even the Friends’ Society of England has missions in China. The China Inland Mission, founded by the noted Doctor Hudson Taylor in 1862, has eight hundred missionaries who altruistically accept the smallest salaries paid in China. Many of them live on the land, in the “faith” method. The method of the organization is by personal contact rather than by expensive, highly organized education. For years this was the most dramatic and heroic mission in the darker provinces of the land. The Salvation Army has also come to China through the world-binding love of that extraordinary man, “General” Booth. American missions dominate in Protestant China, British and Colonial missions being one-half as strong, which means an equal zeal when the population of the two countries is considered.
American missions are stronger in educational, political and medical activities; the British make a specialty of preaching, charities and personal work. The Americans develop more native preachers and translators than any of the other missions, and their confidence in the Chinese is producing wonderful results in reaching toward the establishment of a self-sustaining church some day. No work, except the medical missions, has, however, ever surpassed the aim of the British and Foreign and American Bible Societies to put a translated Bible in the hands of every Chinese. China, foremost of all lands, ranks learning above everything else. By its attitude in specializing in education, the American church has attracted the sympathy of the leaders of the nation. No nation has a monopoly of mission heroes, but the wisdom of the American decision has been at once apparent.
The Roman missions work largely on the medieval plan of: “Give me the child till he is thirteen and I don’t care who gets it after that.” The American Protestants and some of the British say: “Give him to me from thirteen to twenty-three, so that he can understand.” One proselytizes possibly by prejudice and association. The other, imparting all the knowledge possible, trusts to the mind and sense of cultivated justice in the pupil. The Roman orphanages in China outnumber the Protestants five to one. The high-grade schools and colleges of the Americans are almost alone in the field, though the British propose now to follow vigorously. The difference is in attitude. There is no difference between Romanist and Protestant missionary in China in braving death from the hands of pirates, persecution from “Boxers” and others, misery, disease and alienation. The heroes are numberless; their lives are thrilling; their aims are the most altruistic the world has known, and the orchard is in such a flower of fruitage now as to dazzle the altruist’s eye.
It was a matter of great interest to foreigners when the October, 1911, revolution opened, that the chief leader and organizer of the movement, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius) was a Christian, the son of a Cantonese (Fatshan) evangelist. It will be remembered that Siu Tsuen, the leader of the 1848 Taiping rebellion, which marched from Canton to Nanking via the Mei Ling pass, was also a Cantonese Christian, but infinitely inferior to Doctor Sun in education and experience, as well as in character. Eventually Siu fell away from the faith, under the influence of bad advisers, into savagery. The missions were all given advance information previous to the October, 1911, revolution, showing that the Chinese esteem missionaries ahead of diplomats. This is a very precious compliment, and marks the vast advance of Christianity in the hearts of the Chinese “Hoi Polloi.” Even before the October, 1911, rebellion, officials of the old class were throwing away their prejudices against missionaries and welcoming them as angels of light in a way that would have delighted Paul and Barnabas. General Tsen Chun Hsuan, a bloody enough loyalist leader in war, when viceroy of Szechuen province, made this address: “My hope is that the missionary teachers and medical missionaries of America and Britain will spread their gospel more widely than ever, and that the influence of the gospel may bring boundless happiness for our people of China. I shall not be the only one to thank you for your good work. Long live your Gospel.”
The literal name by which the Roman church goes in China is “Tien Chu” (Heaven Lord church), and the Protestants are generally called by the Catholics and by the Chinese “Jesus church,” or “Shangti” (Supreme Ruler church). The American Episcopalians and the British Anglicans in April, 1912, decided to call themselves the “Holy Public church” (Sheng Kung Hwei). The Roman missionaries had much to do with the annexation of vast Tonquin (population twenty-two millions) by France, and their activity is similarly ambitious in Yunnan province, lower Szechuen, and in Kwangsi and Kweichou provinces. As long ago as 1844, so brave a traveler and learned a priest as Abbé Huc insisted on wearing the yellow robe of the privileged mandarin class. Not only at one station or in one province did he do this, but on his journey of 1849 through Tibet, Szechuen, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Kwangtung provinces, he wore the robe and demanded the reception of a mandarin, the thinly veiled implication being that if he was interfered with, there were French guns that could pound the Taku and Bogue forts on the way to Tientsin and Canton, respectively, which they really did ten years later. As late as 1899, when China was torn by dissensions between the reformers and the reactionaries, and while the wounds of her defeat by Japan were still open, the Roman church, with the diplomatic aid of France, forced from the then Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) an imperial rescript granting Roman priests the rank and insignia of a Chinese perfect (mandarin), and Roman bishops the astoundingly high title and insignia of a viceroy, which honors affected eleven hundred priests and forty-six bishops. It was not until 1909 that China resolved to throw off this incubus. The rescript was rescinded by the new Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board) and Li Pu (Board of Rites). Enlightened Romanists in America of course do not uphold such militant Romanism, which smacks rather much of the bizarre days of Cortez. Let it be said too that the French Romanist abroad is more medieval than the French Romanist in France. While sailing in the Red Sea, talking with French clerics from Tajoora, which faces the hot Gulf of Aden, and while walking along the red banks of the Saigon River in Indo-China, I have heard bitter criticisms from French priests which would have been deemed lèse majesté in the home republic itself.
A traveler can not pass through China without being mobbed by the sick to be cured. “You are a foreigner, you must be a doctor; cure me and mine; I have heard that the foreigners can cure any ill; cure me, man of Jesus.” It is agonizing. I knew a man who only carried a caustic stick and two drugs (quinine and salts). Wherever he was mobbed with appeals he administered these drugs to those whom he thought they would benefit. Almost better if he had not done so. The cured who leaped about with new life were enough proof that he was “lying” when he said that he could not heal the wounded, the seriously ill, the leprous and the ulcered. He was almost torn apart. Were I a billionaire, I am a thousand times sure that I would send a thousand medical missionaries to China for five years, each man to hire a Chinese understudy, and carry a full surgical and medical chest, and the Bible and medical text books only. Then I would leave the Chinese pupils to carry on the work; they would be stationed as radiating centers at proper distances apart throughout the land. I would then spend the rest of my life listening to the marvelous stories which my five thousand friends had to tell of what they had seen and done. No man who ever lived—not even Paul when he wrote the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians; not even the beloved John when he saw the Heavenly City in seraphic dreams—would have experienced such real and wide happiness as I. No man could pass away with more ecstatic memories, such a delirium of too much joy.
I want to write a word of commendation of the missionary, for detraction by some in high places, and by some authors who write as they fly and flit at the ports, is not uncommon. The attacks upon missions in Henry Norman’s Peoples and Politics of the Far East, and in Pumpelly’s Across America and Asia, are well known, and have been repeated by others. One may be a cynic at home, and with reason sometimes criticize some pulpits because they fear the magnate at the end of some pews, and color their sermons accordingly. One may in a supercilious way sneer at the seeming lack of personality in the missionary candidate, who in a gentle faith stands up in her or his church to answer the call: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” But follow the worker into the China field, and see what that call and the altruistic opportunity has done by its very immensity. The gentle missionary has soon become many things: a brave pioneer in exile; a scholar and linguist; an organizer of great power and tact; a local foreign minister of great ability in adapting the West to the East; a scientist, housekeeper, traveler, physician, explorer, ethnologist, nurse, orator; the only host of explorers; the most generous of mankind; an ideal example of what the West should be; the most inspired of human beings in self-sacrifice and wonderful accomplishment under difficulties. Their expenses are many; their resources few. Many have to live on the slimmest of contributions from home, such as the missionaries of the China Inland Mission, the Scandinavian Mission, and the Scottish Missions, which are not rich.
Many, like the American and English missionaries, receive fair help from home, but spend on their equipment, and educational and hospital buildings the money that was due to themselves and their families as salaries. The highly cultured, brave president of the Nanking University accepts only $1,500 as salary, whereas if he were in America, on a purely business basis he would be expected to demand $15,000 for the same services and expenses of his high position. The writer does not mean to select one board as doing better than another. All have done marvelously, and China can never forget. In the Yangtze valley at Shanghai and Wuchang, along the whole front of the rebellion of 1911, the American Episcopalians have universities and training schools, which were especially noted by the republicans. The missionary does not always desire money. Such a simple thing as a magazine, or a new book of travel, or a standard work of fiction, or a weekly newspaper from some metropolis, is a god-send to the missionaries at the outposts, under the idol’s hills, who like to feel that though they are thousands of miles from a treaty port, they are yet in touch with civilization. Any one can get from the Mission Boards the names of missionaries who are off the beaten track from Yunnan province up to the Amur River in China, and send them now and then at trifling cost this cheering literature, which will shine upon them like the beloved sun of the far-away home land. Treat them as American and British men and women, and not only in the high light of missionaries, for they are the ambassadors from the West to the East, and there is no form of our civilization in which they are not active, efficient and heroic.
England and America contribute the same sum to missions, but as England is the smaller, the statistics reveal that America is doing only half what she should do in the China mission field. Of the denominations, the American Methodists easily lead the world, followed in order by the Anglican Church of England, the Presbyterian Church of America, the Baptist Church of America, and the old Congregational Church of America with many heroes on its old roster, which dates back to 1812. If you ask what the Chinese think of missionaries I will quote the following prayer spoken by the Confucian viceroy, Hsi Liang, in the Scotch chapel at Mukden for the hero physician, Doctor Jackson, who died as a voluntary martyr in the pneumonic plague in 1910, and you can answer whether you do not think it eloquently pathetic: “Doctor Jackson, with the heart of your Christ, who died to save the world, came to our aid when we besought him to help our country in its hour of distress. Daily, where the plague lay thickest, amidst the groans of the dying, he struggled to help the stricken to find medicine. Worn out by his efforts the pest seized and took him long before his time. Our sorrow is beyond all measure; our grief too deep for words. Oh! Spirit of Doctor Jackson, we pray you to intercede for the twenty million people in Manchuria, and ask the Lord of Heaven to take away this plague so that we may once more lay our heads in peace upon our pillows. In life you were brave; you, therefore, now are a spirit. Noble Spirit, who gave up your life for us, help us still, look down with sympathy upon us all.”