No doubt one of the reasons why the missionaries now see their way to the acceptance of this University is because a neutral body has come forward to initiate the undertaking. Committees of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been sitting for many months considering the question with all the skill and ability which their great learning and technical knowledge enable them to bring to bear on this subject. Though of course they have a thorough knowledge of education in all its aspects, they were aware that they lacked knowledge of China and the Chinese, so for many months they heard and examined the evidence of any one who was thoroughly acquainted with China and with the conditions of missionary work. They devised a scheme which they thought would at once satisfy the workers in the mission field and be acceptable to the Chinese. The mere outline of the scheme is that this University should encourage the formation of denominational hostels, which shall be under the control of individual missionary bodies, and which shall form colleges at the University; and while the University alone would concern itself with giving secular teaching from a neutral standpoint, the colleges would give Christian teaching to their pupils. In this way all conflict between missions would be avoided; each mission would continue to care for the pupils which it had hitherto sheltered and educated. To the University would accrue the great gain of having a supply of properly prepared pupils coming into it from the mission schools, one of the causes of disappointment of ill-considered University schemes being that there is no proper provision for a supply of pupils. In the West there are numerous secondary schools, and any University can easily find a sufficient number of pupils properly grounded in knowledge. In the East to erect a University without feeding schools is like building a house in the Chinese fashion roof first. The Yale University Mission found itself compelled to set up elementary schools to teach the elementary Western knowledge which was necessary before even the lowest grade of college work could be attempted. Western teachers are, as we have before explained, few and far between outside the mission schools, and therefore mission schools would both help and be helped by a University. The University completes the work they have begun, and returns the men to the mission to carry on its work with honour and efficiency. On the other hand, the mission supplies the University with pupils, which after all are the prime necessity of education.
Another great feature of the Oxford and Cambridge scheme was that the University should aim to be a native University, and this no doubt was the side which attracted the Chinese. Instead of using knowledge, the common heritage of all men, as the means of imposing the domination of the alien on China, knowledge is offered by this University as essentially the thing which belongs to China as well as to any other race. If in the commencement the majority of the professors must belong to the Western race, it is to be hoped that many of its professors will soon come from China, and that when the University is well begun, and Christianity has become as national a religion as it is in our land, and Western civilisation has lost the right to describe itself by that epithet, and has become the civilisation of the East as of the West, then the University whose foundation is now being laid may be the great light of the future China.
Perhaps the most important part of the scheme is that which suggests denominational hostels as the proper solution of the difficulties that beset union and interdenominational work in the mission field.
There are obvious difficulties in arranging for a common religious teaching, and, on the other hand, it is very advantageous for the many mission bodies at work in China to show a united front against the new materialism and the ancient superstition. Nothing so shows the power of Christian love as a union work of this nature.
We Christians are often taunted with our differences, and we are assured that many will support any scheme that makes for union and peace between the different elements of the Christian world. Here is a scheme which will tend to bring Christians together, and to induce that mutual respect and toleration which must be the foundation of a closer union. The baby must walk before he runs, and if the Christians of China can maintain such a University, their daily intercourse will greatly assist any further scheme for unity.
But there is another use in the hostel system which should not be overlooked. At all times one of the great hindrances to the education of young men is the tendency that they have to waste their strength in riot and wantonness. The Chinaman is perhaps more subject to these temptations than the Westerner. A student said: "We cannot work; we are too profligate." A Chinese statesman advised against certain towns as possible sites for a University because of their tendency to entice men into vicious courses. Far the most efficient way of opposing this evil is to make some one responsible for the moral welfare of the young men, and this is done in the hostel system.
Every hostel would be governed by some person who would make the moral welfare of the young men his peculiar care and study. The head of the hostel might or might not be on the teaching staff of the University; but whether he taught or not, his first duty would be the care of the moral and spiritual welfare of those committed to his charge. He would give all his energy to reproduce the highest moral tone of a Western University.
This scheme is being tried in Chentu, where a union University is being started. And I believe it is in every way proving successful. Those who have not realised the size of China will be perhaps inclined to ask why not unite the two schemes? The simple answer to those who have travelled is that the distances are too vast. You might as well talk of uniting Oxford and Harvard, for those two Universities are about as far from one another in time as Hankow is from Chentu. Even when the railway is built the distances will be immense. The enormous distances of China are also a reason why it was impossible to amalgamate the Hong-Kong scheme and the Oxford and Cambridge scheme. Hong-Kong is now ten days to a fortnight away from Hankow, and such a different language is spoken there that the dwellers in Northern and Central China are often forced to use English to understand one another.
The University of Hong-Kong will be very beneficial to the colony, and is an example of the generosity of the merchants and citizens of that town; but as a means of naturalising the higher side of our civilisation it labours under the great disadvantage of not being either in China nor under the Chinese flag, nor of speaking the prevailing language.