SIONARIES IN CHINA.

To the Editor of the Washington Post.

SIR-I see that an article is being extensively quoted from your columns, said to have been inspired by Lieutenant Wood, of the United States navy, and referring to American missions and missionaries in China. The communication appears to have been sent by reporters to the Evening Post of New York, the Globe-Democrat of St. Louis and other prominent papers. Lieutenant Wood is therefore before the public as the author of charges so grave as to challenge investigation. They concern two or three hundred educated and disinterested American citizens who are devoting their lives to the cause of Christian philanthropy in China, and they virtually challenge the common sense of some millions of Christian people who with ever-widening knowledge and increasing zeal are supporting the work.

His statements are such as these:

There is not a Chinese convert to Christianity of sound mind to-day within the entire extent of China. They are merely the menials employed about the headquarters of the missionaries, who, for a salary of four dollars per month, become converts; but when they are discharged there is no further evidence of their change of mind. As a matter of fact they (the missionaries) are looked upon about as the

Salvation Army in America, only to a degree

ten times as great.

The deck of a naval vessel lying in the harbor of a foreign port is not the most favorable standpoint from which to form accurate estimates of the moral and religious condition of cities, or of the progress of Christian work. If, for example, a Spanish man-of-war were lying for a few weeks in the harbor of New York, and its officers on coming ashore were restricted in their intercourse to the limited circles with whom they would be most likely to be in sympathy,

account of the state of religion in the city, the comparative success of the Baptists or the Episcopalians, the relative strength of the Quakers, or any accurate account of the city mission work accomplished by the various. organizations. Men are generally well or ill informed on different subjects according to the circles in which they move. There are many circles in this city in which a stranger would get no other verdict than that the churches of New York are nests of hypocrisy and superstition, and that their ministers are knaves or fools, or both. A man of religious principles assorting with his kind would reach the very opposite conclusion.

Within the last twenty years large numbers of men have visited the foreign missionary fields clergymen, scholars, scientists, merchants, newspaper reporters and adventurers, and every variety of report has been made, according to the character of the informant, from the highest encomiums to the most sweeping denunciations. Several of the representatives of the United States government in China, not always professed believers, have spoken in the highest terms of the work of American missionaries in that empire. Many of the noblest statesmen of England, including Lord Northcote, formerly lieutenant-governor general of India, have given a similar testimony for the Indian missions. The late Earl of Shaftes

bury and others have spoken in equallycomplimentary terms of the mission work in the Turkish empire. Sir William W. Hunter, in an article in the Nineteenth Century of July, 1888, says:

The careless onlooker may have no particular convictions on the subject, and flippant persons may ridicule religious effort in India as elsewhere, but I think that few Indian administrators have passed through high office and had to deal with the ultimate problems of British government without feeling the value of the work done by the missionaries.

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Lieutenant Wood's statement that the American missionaries in China are looked upon very much as the Salvation Army people are here will surprise those intelligent residents who have known the history of such men as Dr. S. Wells Williams, Bishop Boone, Henry Rankin, Walter and Reuben Lowrie, or who are familiar with the work of living men like Doctors Martin, Nevius, Blodgett, Baldwin, Happer, Corbett, Mateer and many others.

Our United States minister, Col. Charles Denby, instead of retailing the current gossip of men out of all sympathy with the missionaries, has thought it wise to secure accurate information by actually visiting the American mission stations in China from Pekin to Canton, and after completing his visit he wrote to General Shackleford, of Evansville, Ind., as follows:

Believe nobody when he sneers at the missionaries. The man is simply not posted. It is idle for men to decry the missionaries or their work. I can tell the real from the false. These men and women are honest, pious, sincere and trained for their work by the most arduous study. I do not address myself to the churches, but as a man of the world talking to sinners like myself, I say that it is difficult to say too much of good of missionary work in China.

The same gentleman, in a paper read befor the Pekin Oriental Society, openly declared that "the missionaries precede commerce, and prepare the way for it; they are the forerunners who render possible foreign residence; their educational and literary labors have instructed foreigners as to China, and the Chinese as to foreigners; their philanthropy has elicited the confidence and respect of the Chinese," and he added, “to them, the early and in fact the only pioneers and translators, the legations owe a debt of gratitude."

It is peculiarly inopportune for Lieutenent Wood to slander the American missionaries in China just at the close of a winter which many of them have spent away from their homes and amid scenes of unutterable distress from famine and consequent sickness, where with great peril to their own

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lives they have distributed the funds contributed for the starving. Had our critical friend soiled his buttons with some such service while they remained at ease, he might have had some reason to criticise.

But let us consider Lieutenant Wood's imputations upon the character of the con

verts.

He alleges that "they are merely the menials employed around the mission headquarters, and that as soon as their pay is stopped their piety is at an end." There are at this date not less than 35,000 native Protestant communicants, a large number, one would think, to be retained as servants and employed by about two hundred missionary families of various nations, and all on small salaries. Evidently our critic is dispensing with facts or statistics. It is true that those who are employed as servants or in other capacities are generally converts to the Christian faith, and it is very natural that such should be employed as being more trustworthy. But I have yet to learn of any instances in which men have professed their faith for the sake of obtaining employment, though it would be strange if such instances did not sometimes occur, whether in China or in Christian lands.

It has been my privilege to visit China from Pekin to Canton, and to devote my whole time to a critical study of the mission work and of the character of the converts, and I do not hesitate to say that I regard the average sincerity and stability of Christian character in China as high as we find it in this country. That there is as great intelligence no one would claim. On the other hand, there is far less incidental help derived from a conventional public sentiment there than here, and therefore it requires much greater fortitude to embrace Christianity in China than in the United States. Some of the most noble instances of fidelity under cruel and persistent persecution and even imminent peril, have been witnessed among the native Christians of China. Tests which are never known in a peaceful Christian land are constantly encountered by the Chinese in embracing Christianity, and this is just as true of the low classes as of the high Not one in twenty of those who

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profess the Christian faith is in a position to expect therefrom any earthly emolument, but all must look for domestic ostracism by their heathen kindred.

Few men of our time have inspired greater confidence by their keen penetration and sober judgment than the late Rev. W. Fleming Stevenson, of Belfast, who, after a tour of observation around the world, reported:

I have found nowhere in Christian lands men and women of a higher type than I met in China, of a finer spiritual experience, of a higher spiritual tone, or of a nobler spiritual life, and I may say with conviction that there are in the native churches in China not only the elements of stability, but that steadfast and irresistible revolution which will carry over the whole empire to the new faith.

His opinions were not formed from the deck of a vessel in the harbor, nor from the loose talk at a dinner party in port, but from a personal inspection of the mission work, and from contact with native Christians day by day and week after week.

Lieutenant Wood and those who receive his flippant utterances ought to know that in connection with the various missionary societies there are thousands of native Christians in China who not only receive no helpin the supply of their personal wants, but who are unaided even in the maintenance of their churches. In the Shantung province there are hundreds of native Christians organized in small churches connected with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions who carry on their religious work without assistance of any kind, except that a missionary or native helper pays them an occasional visit. They provide their own places of meeting, such as they are, and carry on their religious life for its own sake. I think I may say that the churches of that province receive less aid in proportion to their needs. and to their means than do the home missionary churches of our own frontier.* The native Christians connected with the American Board and the Reformed Board in southeastern China, and perhaps in still

Rev. Thomas Marshall who has just returned from an extensive tour in China says that this statement might have been much stronger.

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greater degree those belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Board of this country, afford the same testimony.

It is but just to say that one of the most inexhaustible sources of reckless criticism is found in the letters of naval officers, and this has been the case for many, many years. There have been noble exceptions in such men as Admiral Wilkes, Admiral Fitzroy, Commodore Perry, Admiral Foote, Admiral Sullivan, Captain Brinkley, R. N., Lieutenant Bove and many others; but, on the other hand, there has been quite another class of naval officers, American and European, who with their crews have been the pests of the mission work for more than a half century. Their visits to the shore while lying in the harbor of distant nations were often made for anything but missionary purposes, and many a young officer has found in the marts of eastern countries, far away from the restraints of home, those associations at which his mother might well have felt solicitude. Those who are familiar with the reforms which have occurred in Great Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria need not be told of certain customs which were formerly followed by naval vessels in port, which were too shocking to be recorded. They were similar to those in connection with the garrisons of India, which only last year were abolished by the British Parliament. Every one who is familiar with the history of the Pacific Islands for the last seventy years is well aware that there has been a long and desperate struggle between Christian missionaries on the one hand and the officers and crews of the naval, mercantile and whaling marine on the other, as to the question whether those islands should be reclaimed from savagery and be blessed with established and Christian institutions, or should remain as they were, a paradise of lust. And if any one wishes to know what we mean, he has only to recall those infamous books "Omou" and "Typee." During the long struggle, in which the right has at length been victorious, there have been, of course, abundant criticisms against missions and missionaries by those of the opposite party.

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Richard H. Dana, Esq., who visited the Hawaiian Islands in 1860, had often seen these criticisms and had been influenced by them; but in a letter which was published in the New York Tribune he said:

Among the traders, shipmasters and travellers who have visited these islands, some have made disparaging statements respecting the missionaries, and a good deal of imperfect information is carried home by persons who have visited only the half-Europeanized ports, where the worst condition of the natives is presented. But Mr. Dana pursued a different course. He says:

I visited among all classes, the foreign merchants, traders and shipmasters, the foreign and native officials, and with the natives from the king and several of the chiefs to the humblest poor, whom I saw without constraint in a tour I made alone over Hawaii, throwing myself upon their hospitality in their huts. I sought information from all, foreign and native, friendly and unfriendly, and the conclusion to which I came is that the best men and those who are best acquainted with the history of things here hold in high esteem the labors and conduct of the missionaries. The mere seekers of pleasure, power or gain do not like their influence; and those persons who sympathize with that officer of the American navy who compelled the authorities to allow women to go on to his ship, by opening his ports and threatening to bombard the town, naturally are hostile to the missions.

Further on Mr. Dana says:

These islands are visited by the ships of all nations, and form the temporary residence of mostly unmarried traders. At the height of the whaling season the number of transient -seamen in the port of Honolulu equals half the population of the town. The temptations arising from such a state of things, too much aided by the weakness of the native character, are met by the ceaseless efforts of the best people, native and foreign, in the use of moral means and by legislative coercion. It is a close struggle, and in the large seaports often discouraging and of doubtful issue; but it is a struggle of duty and has never yet been relaxed. Doubtless the missionaries have largely influenced the legislation of the kingdom and its police system. It is fortunate that they have done so.

Now I venture to say that in this faithful and discriminating testimony from a disin

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terested witness is found the key to nine tenths of the hostility which exists between certain classes of visitors or sojourners in foreign ports and the missionaries who are trying to save the people from destruction. Even those who do not go ashore for base purposes themselves are very sure to fall under the influence and to imbibe the opinions and prejudices of those whose lives are not altogether correct. A young man in New Jersey, a dozen years ago, was discoursing to me somewhat eloquently on the faults, or rather the inefficiency, of missionaries in China, whereupon something like the following dialogue ensued: "Whom did you see in China principally?" "Oh, the young men of Shanghai and other ports, clerks in warehouses and others." Do you not think some of those young men were leading lives which threw them out of sympathy with missionary operations? Were not some of them a little lax in their morals ?" "Some of them! Every one of them," was the quick reply. "I do not know of an exception." "Well, but do you think that such testimony as theirs is quite conclusive in regard to the work of missions ?"

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There are not only many noble men of family, but those also who are unmarried, who, in the higher tone of recent sentiment, are worthy of all confidence; but that these remarks indicated a very general and prevailing custom in the East there can be no shadow of a doubt, and from these associations very largely proceed the current criticisms against missions.

For many years the work of missions was an experiment. It is such no longer. The Hawaiian Islands have become in an important degree a Christian nation, with schools and churches and a ruling sentiment of morality. The same is true of Fiji, of whose missionary work its first governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, gave so clear a testimony. Japan is so far advanced at the close of the first two decades of missionary work that criticism is powerless. Korea has scarcely had time for a beginning. The testimony in regard to India is clear, positive, explicit, and backed by a host of such

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names as Northcote, Temple, John and Edward Lawrence, Napier, Bartle Frere, Aitcheson, McLeod, Rivers Thompson, Baxter, Cust, Herbert Edwardes, Monier Williams, and a multitude of others, most of whom have spent many years in India, and have studied the country with the penetrating spirit of statesmen dealing with all the social, moral and religious influences which are at work in its regeneration.

I might cite the testimony of administrators of the British government in many lands, I might summon as witnesses travellers like Schweinforth, Gordon and Stanley, and even the intrepid traveller Joseph Thomson, who, though skeptical and often critical, has paid the highest tribute to the

character of the missionaries whom he had met in the Dark Continent.

But I close with the testimonies of Mr. Charles Darwin in his accounts of "The Voyage of the Beagle," and he certainly began with no bias in favor of Christian missions. He says of the work among the Maoris of New Zealand, "The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's wand," and speaking of a gathering of children whom. he saw at a mission station, he writes:

I never saw a nicer or more merry group, and to think that this was the centre of the land of cannibalism, murder and all atrocious crimes; I took leave of the missionaries with thankfulness for their kind welcome, and with feelings of high respect for their gentlemanlike, useful and upright characters. I think it would be difficult to find a body of men better adapted for the high office which they fulfill.

While on the same voyage he wrote in his journal concerning a visit to Tahiti, as follows:

Before we lay down to sleep the elder Tahitian fell on his knees and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue. He prayed as a Christian should do, with fitting reverence and without the fear of ridicule or any ostentation of piety. At our meals, neither of the men would taste food without saying grace. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian only prays when the eyes of the missionary are upon him should have slept with us that night on the mountain side.

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Then in general, speaking of the work, he adds:

There are many persons who attack both the missionaries, their system and the effects produced by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with that of the island only twenty years ago, nor even with that of Europe at this day. But they compare it with the high standard of gospel perfection. They expect the missionaries to effect that which the Apostles themselves failed to do. They forget or will not remember that human sacrifices, a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world, infanticide, bloody wars in which the conquerors spared neither women nor children, have been abolished, and that dishonesty, intemperance and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity. For a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude, for should he chance to be shipwrecked on some unknown coast he will most devoutly pray that the lessons of the missionaries may have extended thus far.

A still stronger and more practical testimony is given by Mr. Darwin of the results of self-denying missionary labor which he witnessed at Terra del Fuego, whose inhabitants he had considered incapable of regeneration. So strong were his impressions, after actual observation of the work which had been accomplished, that on his return he wrote to the missionary society having that mission in charge, stating his convictions and asking to be enrolled among the annual subscribers for the fund.

F. F. ELLINWOOD, Secretary Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. NEW YORK, August 24, 1889.

REPORT TO THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS.

REV. R. N. ADAMS, SUPERINTENDENT. During the greater part of the first month of the quarter I was in your delectable village, taking my meals at the Park Hotel, enjoying receptions, pilgrimages, popular meetings and sessions of the General Assembly. I have paid for it all, with interest, since then. Whether I will ever get up with my work again doth not yet appear.

I have gone to some new place every Sabbath, and there are five places now calling loudly for help.