nothing. By being brought more in contact with them, we should pick up their language, and instead of being at the mercy of that villanous thing known under the name of compradore, we should at once preserve our dignity, and enter into more pleasant and profitable relations with a people whose closer acquaintance is better worth cultivating than we in our national insularity are prone to believe.”
Such pleasant experiences, which were often repeated, were not always, however, the order of the day when our traveller met the individual popularly known as the “heathen Chinee.” At the mission-stations, or wherever he encountered isolated Christians, he received always the most cordial hospitality, since even the jealous Chinaman, in becoming Catholic, becomes also cosmopolitan.
At Chung Ching, where Monseigneur Desfleches sent a swell Chinese merchant to be his escort about the city, Mr. Cooper visited a newly-built and very beautiful Taouist temple, belonging to a sect differing widely from the Buddhists, and which he describes as representing the ancient polytheism of the country, as reformed and engrafted with a peculiar theosophy of Laotse, the great rival of Confucius. Here also he assisted at daybreak on a Sunday morning at the sacrifice of the Mass, served by a Chinese priest and Chinese acolytes, and listened to a Chinese sermon. The devout behavior of the congregation, many of whom gathered around him after the Mass was over, and, on learning that he was not a Catholic, naturally expressed fervent hopes that he might soon become one, made a great impression upon our traveller’s mind. He could not, he says, avoid being influenced by them, nor help offering up a silent prayer for the success of
the Catholic missions in China. He finds the present power of these missions a “most striking instance of the inutility of coercion directed to restrain freedom of mind in religion. The fearful persecutions that assailed the missionaries and their converts during the eighteenth century, failed altogether to arrest the spread of Catholic Christianity, which now, but a hundred years later, numbers its adherents by hundreds of thousands, to be found in all the provinces of the empire.”
Apparently both the missions and the missionaries impressed him much; and he gives a lengthy account of them, prefacing it with the remark that whoever deems it irrelevant is at liberty to skip it. In his judgment, as in that of every intelligent observer, it is the literati and the governing classes who are the promoters of all the persecutions of the converts—the people themselves are neither so jealous of foreigners nor so attached to paganism as is often supposed.
The converts are principally recruited from the well-to-do middle classes, although there are in the villages many Christian communities composed of the industrious peasantry. When Mr. Cooper was in China, the missions were enjoying perfect toleration, but from his observation of the marked dislike of the Christians displayed by the officials and the literati, he was apprehensive that this apparent peace might be at any moment exchanged for all the perils of persecution—an apprehension which, as all the world knows, has since been most fearfully realized. We extract a few passages from his account of the missions, as recording the impressions of a candid observer as to the success of a work of which he was yet capable of lamenting that the devoted men who labor in it “are not the apostles of a simpler and
purer faith.” Yet when he meets “apostles” of what he supposes to be a “simpler and purer faith,” he can hardly preserve a decent gravity in contemplating either their methods or their results. “By their fruits ye shall know them” is naturally the last reflection suggested to the mind of a Protestant when he considers missionary work. The application of the text would be so speedily fatal to his Protestantism that the instinct of self-preservation keeps him from making it:
“The Société des Missions Etrangères, which from its headquarters in Paris directs the affairs of this mission, is most careful in the selection and training of the candidates for missionary life. As their work lies much among the wealthy and educated, though the poor and ignorant are by no means neglected, every missionary sent to Sz-chuan is specially educated for the purpose of meeting the Chinese literati on equal terms. They land in China generally as young and newly-ordained priests, under vows by which the rest of their lives is dedicated to the Sz-chuan Mission. Once having entered upon their work, they never abandon it, nor return to their native country; indeed, it is impossible for them to do so, for I have good reasons for stating that any recreant who may seek, in violation of his engagements, to quit the country, is certain to be apprehended by the Mandarins and sent back to the jurisdiction of the mission. This has an apparent connection with the edict of Khang-hi, which accorded toleration to those missionaries only who would swear never to return to Europe. The young missionary on entering China strips himself of his nationality; he shaves his head, and adopts the Chinese costume, and conforms in all respects to the Chinese mode of life.
His first two years are spent either at one of the principal mission stations or at some out-station, in close attendance on an old and experienced father, under whose care he systematically studies the language and the manners of the people to whose service he has devoted his life. He is also trained in the working of the mission, and, as soon as he is a proficient in the language, is appointed to a permanent post under general orders from the bishop of the district to which he has been sent from Paris. It can easily be imagined that a mission numbering its converts by tens of thousands, and carrying its labors over such a vast extent of country as Western China and Eastern Thibet, must be a well-organized institution systematically administered. Taking advantage of the division of all the provinces into districts, each district is worked by the mission with more or less activity, as the disposition of the people will allow. The apostolic bishop resident at Chung Ching exercises a metropolitan authority over four other bishops, who reside at Cheutu and Swi-foo, in Sz-chuan, Yunnan-foo in Yunnan, and in Kwei-cheu, and Bishop Chauveau at Ta-tsian-loo. The latter has charge of the mission stations of Eastern Thibet established at Bathang, Yengin, and Tz-coo, on the western banks of the Lan-tsan-kiang. I was informed that there were, in 1868, three hundred French missionaries, besides native priests and catechists, engaged in the missions working in the above provinces. The pay of a missionary varies from one hundred taels[79] per mensem—the salary of a bishop—to twenty taels, the scanty stipend of the simple fathers. Out of this they provide themselves with everything. At small out-stations, of course, the
people give many presents of food, but even then the pay is so trifling, compared with the salaries drawn by Protestant missionaries, that one can only wonder how these French missionaries manage to exist, and it is only when their self-denying and abstemious mode of life is witnessed that an adequate idea can be formed of real missionary work.