CHAPTER XXI

EDUCATION, CHIEFLY MISSIONARY

I have before had occasion to refer to the great influence education has had on the awakening of China, and I think the Americans can fairly claim to have been the greatest workers in this field. The Roman Catholics have from time immemorial been most careful to train children in Christian truth, and they have wonderful institutions for this purpose. In 1852 the Jesuits founded the College of St. Ignatius for the education of native priests, and since that day they have founded many educational institutions. They have besides a very large number of primary schools, intended originally merely to preserve their converts from too intimate contact with the heathen world, and they have also many higher schools. In those schools they teach modern knowledge, making a speciality of teaching French, which they can do with great efficiency, as many of their number belong to the French nation. In the German sphere of influence there are Catholic schools where German is taught; but though the work is excellent, it cannot be compared with the work of the Americans, who were really the pioneers of higher education in China.

When the American missionaries began to arrive, a new departure was inaugurated in education. The school and college were no longer places where Christians were simply educated; they were places where Christians, confident in the truth of their teaching, gave away to heathen and Christian alike all the knowledge that the West possessed. The conception was bold; it was grand. It showed a statesmanlike grip of the situation and a courage which can only come from a consciousness of the strength of the Christian position, that Christianity was not a narrow religion fearing free inquiry. Christianity, on the contrary, was a religion which could only be appreciated by those who had the very fullest knowledge. These teachers boldly declared that ignorance was the mother of religious error, and therefore the duty of every Christian was at once to remove ignorance and to share with every one the knowledge that can alone make the world capable of truly appreciating God's power as manifested in every department of science.

So these schools and colleges grew up. Those who believed in this policy did not belong to any one denomination, though they did belong to one nation—America. There were many opponents to this policy. It was argued that the duty of the mission bodies was to preach the Gospel, and that however advantageous education might be, it was not the business of the Christian to give it; but whatever doubt there was then, facts have been too strong for those who opposed the educational policy, and any one travelling through China realises more and more how the Mission that has spent money on education is the Mission that has the power of expansion. The Mission that has no educational system is always cabined and confined for want of money and men. They are always writing home to ask that another man shall be sent out; some one has broken down or some new opportunity for work has been opened, and so "they must press upon the Home Board the great importance of sending out at as early a date as possible one or more helpers." The Home Board is always answering those letters, expressing "every sympathy with their anxiety," but in reality pouring cold water on their enthusiasm, and pointing out that the supply of men is limited and that the supply of money is yet more limited. Thus the opportunity passes and the mission cannot expand. The same little church stands filled with converts; the same mission building houses the tired out and climate-stricken white missionaries. Such a mission, while inspiring the greatest respect for the heroism of the missionaries, arouses also a feeling of despair. How is it possible that a mission like this can really solve the problem of making Christianity a national religion? How can spiritual ministrations be performed by aliens, supported by alien money collected from a possibly hostile race?

A very different effect is made on the mind of the onlooker when he comes upon some mission that has made education a speciality. There all is life, vigour and success. One of the most successful of the American missionaries, Bishop Roots, of the Episcopal Church of America, explained the system by which he is succeeding in making Christianity an indigenous religion. At his large college, presided over by Mr. Jackson, many are heathen. Some go through the college and imbibe a certain respect for Christian ethics, which will not only make them a benefit to China but will make an intellectual atmosphere sympathetic to Christian teaching. Some, however, will become Christians who will mostly go out into the world and take their place, and a high place too, in the leadership of the future China, as much owing to the excellence of the teaching that they have received as to the high morality which is produced by their Christian faith. Then there will be a few who will feel a distinct call to go out as missionaries to their own people. These men will have no temptation to become Christians for the loaves and fishes, because, owing to the excellence of the education that they have received and the great prosperity that is dawning over China, they could command a large salary in the open market. These highly-educated clergy are able to go out and put Christianity to the Chinese in a manner which no white man could hope to equal.

What Bishop Roots told me can be well illustrated by two little incidents. In Hankow, where his work is increasing by leaps and bounds, the Lutheran Mission failed, and therefore it resigned the chapel to him. He accepted readily, and soon his Chinese clergy were preaching to crowded congregations. The second incident was this: I expressed a wish to make a present to one of these Christian scholars, and I asked what books he would like to receive. I was told that such books as Balfour's "Defence of Philosophic Doubt" and Haldane's "Pathway to Reality" were the kind that would appeal to such young men. Not only will these men carry the Gospel to their fellow-countrymen far more efficiently than can the alien, but they will to a great extent be able to live on the subscriptions of their congregations, and so the communion to which they belong will become not only self-propagating but self-supporting.

To understand the importance of this controversy the various aims of missionary education must be realised, and it is because those aims are different that the controversy has been confused and the value of education as an assistance to missionary effort in China misunderstood. There are really seven aims: three which are common to all missionary effort in all lands, and four which especially apply to countries like China which are passing through a transitional period of thought. The three which are common to all missionary effort are (1) evangelisation; (2) edification of the Christian body; (3) education of preachers and teachers. The four that are peculiar to China in her present transitional condition are (4) preparation of secular leaders; (5) leavening of the whole public opinion; (6) opposition to Western materialism; (7) association of Christianity with learning.

The arguments for the first three are applicable to every land. Evangelisation can no doubt be carried on most efficiently before the mind has received any intellectual bias. The Jesuit priest is reported to have said, "If I have the child till he is ten, I do not care who has him afterwards;" and therefore, as in all the world so in China, the Roman Catholics have always made a great effort to educate children. They have preferred those who have had no home-ties, orphans and waifs, and have by this policy built up a huge Christian population numbering over a million. This population is thoroughly Christian in sentiment; they have never known an idolatrous atmosphere, and they live to a great extent by themselves in communities. While they are thoroughly Christian, they are also absolutely Chinese; no effort is made to Westernise the children in any way. From this great Christian body Catholic priests are drawn, and I believe so completely Christian are they, that no difference is made between them and white men by such an important body as the Jesuits. When other Christian bodies began missionary work in China they also started schools, but the difference of their schools was that they aimed much more at the second than at the first object. The school was not merely a place to attract homeless children and bring them up as Christians; it was also intended to edify and adorn with knowledge the children of Christians. Non-Christians were largely admitted, but I think that I am right in stating that the object was much more edification than evangelisation. In a corrupt society like China, where all knowledge is intermingled with vice, it is inevitable that Christian schools should be erected for the Christian body, and it is equally inevitable that those who are non-Christians but who admire the schools greatly should try and enter them. The feature of these schools for the most part, though not invariably, in contrast to the earlier Roman Catholic schools, is that Western education is to a certain extent, varying in each mission, superadded to Chinese learning; and therefore, though the school is essentially a school for Chinese learning, the children as a rule learn something also of Western knowledge.

Out of these schools naturally arise others which have the third aim of missionary education as their object, namely, the preparation of preachers and teachers who in the future shall be the real missionary body of China. Every thinking man realises that the alien missionary can only exist in a brief transitional period. The true teachers of a race must be those who are linked to it by ties of blood and tradition, and nearly every mission has therefore set to work to create a native ministry which is sooner or later to take over the task of the conversion of China. This is regarded by many, nay, by most, as the great aim of missionary educational work. The degree of preparation, however, differs widely in different missions. Some missions, drawing their teachers from the lower ranks of society, are quite content to give them an education which will enable them to lead and teach the lower class among whom they move; other missions held that the Christian teacher must not merely he able to lead the ignorant but must be able also to meet in controversy those who may be well equipped with Western knowledge; and therefore while in some missions the education of native pastors is conducted solely in Chinese, in others the teaching is in English, to enable the teachers and preachers to keep abreast with the thought of Western countries and to defend their land by pen and sermon as much against the errors of the West as against the superstition of the East.

It is in the preparation of these highly educated men that an opportunity is given for the fourth aim of missionary education in China: one which would not be applicable in every country, but which is vitally important in China, namely, the preparation of secular leaders in China. To understand the importance of this we must be always reminding our readers that China is in the midst of an intellectual revolution. She is passing through a period which is in some way comparable to the period of the Renaissance in Europe, but which exceeds it both in importance and in danger, because in Europe, as the name shows, it was essentially a reintroduction of forgotten but not new knowledge with its subsequent enlargement and development. In China the revolution is caused by the introduction of foreign knowledge, which is absolutely inharmonious and in many ways opposed to native thought. In Europe the foundations of knowledge were always secure; it was only the superstructure that was altered. In China the very foundations are being uprooted; the result is that China is at the present without leaders, except for a narrow band of men, who owing to the foresight of some Christians in the past have received a Western education. There are plenty of old-fashioned leaders, who have led or failed to lead the sleepy China of years ago—men of considerable ability but in a state of great mental confusion, owing to their powerlessness to comprehend the many aspects of the civilisation which is being forced upon them and which is unnatural to them. They cannot understand our currency questions, our financial operations; they only dimly realise the possibilities and problems connected with military and naval armaments. They yearn for the years gone by, but an inexorable fate urges their country forward into new positions, which bring with them new responsibilities, new powers and new dangers. China demands men to lead her through this terrible state of confusion and change, and she turns round to find the men who understand Western civilisation, who have the character and the knowledge necessary to deal with all these problems. Just at this moment, any man of ability who has an intimate knowledge of Western things stands a chance of high preferment. It may be that this demand will be satisfied by the number of students China has sent abroad to be educated, but the size of China and the great demand for men skilled in Western learning make many of those having a most intimate knowledge of China confident that this is an opportunity that is still open, that it is still possible to direct to some degree the minds and thought of those who will lead China as statesmen, as authors, and as men of learning. The production of these men can be carried on to great advantage in the same establishment as that in which the clergy are receiving their education; the educated clergyman, the future pressmen and statesmen of China are in this way brought in close contact with one another, and even from one establishment the good that may come to China is quite incalculable.

This brings us to the fifth great aim of education, the leavening of public opinion in China so that Christianity will find ground prepared for its sowing. The destruction of superstition, the production of Western ethics make Christianity a reasonable instead of an unreasonable religion to those who hear it preached. Clearly to leaven public opinion influence must be applied to those who will control such powers as those of the press and the school; the teacher and the writer are the men who should be especially aimed at; and to attain this aim, it is necessary to institute and maintain places where higher knowledge is taught rather than only primary schools.

But there is another object, the sixth aim for education in China. One of the unpleasant features in the revolution that is going on in Chinese thought is the present introduction of Western materialism, which to judge by the example in Japan, will grow more rankly after transplantation. The West has a double aspect when seen from the East; it is a Christian world where women are pure and men are honourable; it is a rich world where there are no moral obligations. The first aspect is the one that is represented by the missionary; the second aspect is too often taught by the sailor and merchant classes; and when the Chinaman asks what is the thought and the base of Western teaching, the Japanese materialist, pointing to the example set by many Western lives, declares that Christianity in Europe is like Buddhism in Japan, a religion that at one time had many adherents but whose influence is fast waning, and it is in resisting this materialism that the Missionary College and University perform perhaps their most important task.

The men who are to do this work must be men most highly skilled in Western knowledge; they must understand science and be able to meet a follower of Haeckel in debate, they must be competent to discuss sociology with disciples of Herbert Spencer, and they must not be afraid to dip into the study of comparative religion; in addition, they must be qualified to write excellent Chinese and to be firm in their Christian faith. The production of such men as these should also satisfy the seventh and last aim of Christian education: it will associate learning with Christianity in the minds of the Chinese. The keynote of Chinese thought is its great admiration for learning. In China there is no caste or class, no division except between the ignorant and the learned; if Christianity is associated with ignorance, its influence will be lost, and it is no mean object to make Christianity and knowledge in the mind of the Chinaman two parts of one great idea.

It is obvious that as missionary societies lay weight on one or the other of these objects, they will support a different kind of school. If their object is the first, they will seek to educate the orphan and the waif, and the school and the orphanage will be, as they are in the Roman Catholic body, intimately joined together. If the object is to edify the Christian body and to provide it with a suitable pastor, the missionary body will erect primary schools for Christian children and theological and normal schools to complete their school system. If, on the other hand, the missionary body aims at leavening the whole thought of China, of capturing China for Christ, or if it aims at defending China against the terrible pest of Western materialism—which will turn the light that China now has into black darkness and harden her for ever against Christian teaching—the High School, College, and the University will be the objects on which the money will be spent. This last has been the object of the American bodies; and I think China owes a great debt of gratitude, under God, to the great width of thought and grasp of the situation that the American mind has exhibited.

CHAPTER XXII

GOVERNMENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

One of the highest testimonials to the wisdom of the missionaries in inaugurating an educational policy has been given by the Chinese Government. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, and missionary education has its imitator in no less a body than the Chinese Government. The Chinese have always loved education, but the education they admired was the literary education which had for its commencement the Chinese character and for its end the Chinese Classics; their system of teaching was different from our own; they were far greater believers in learning by rote than the most conservative English schoolmaster who ever set a long repetition lesson to his pupils. It is a strange sight to see an old-fashioned Chinese school, the boys all shouting out at the top of their voices the names of the characters whose meaning they do not understand. An essential part of the performance is the clamorous shouting; the louder they shout, the harder they are working and the quicker they think they learn, so when the visitor surprises a class their voices are not raised above a pleasant and reasonable elevation, but after he has been discovered by the class, the shouts increase in volume till the noise is only to be compared to the paroquets' cage in the Zoological Gardens.

Another peculiarity of the school is that all the pupils turn their backs to their master; the doctrine being that if they were allowed to watch their master, it would be perfectly impossible for him to detect their many little acts of dishonesty. The missionaries at first painfully imitated these schools; they felt that it was impossible to trust the children of their converts to the heathen atmosphere of a Chinese school, and at the same time they realised what great value and importance was placed by the Chinese on education. These schools led on to a sort of middle school called "shu-yuen," which existed in all big towns, which in its turn led on to four Universities, but they have been, I believe, for some time in an inefficient condition. Still for good or for evil the system was there, and long before our own new departure in education, the Chinese were quite accustomed to the idea that the boy who had sufficient ability might climb the ladder of learning, from class to class, from school to school, till at last he took the coveted Hanlin Degree. So high a value did the Chinese place on education, that it was possible, and it did indeed happen, that boys of the very humblest parentage climbed that ladder till they reached the most exalted positions.

The first sign of an alteration of this system was the book that was issued after the Chinese-Japanese war by Chang-Chih-Tung. That remarkable statesman realised after China's crushing defeat that a general reform was absolutely necessary if she was to maintain her place among the free and independent nations of the world, and he wrote a book entitled "China's Only Hope," in which he strongly advocated the acceptance in some measure of Western education. His scheme is the one which practically obtains now in China, that is of making Chinese learning the foundation on which Western education is to be placed. He had a great disbelief, like most Chinese, in the difficulty of acquiring Western education. He writes: "Comparative study of foreign geography, especially that of Russia, France, Germany, England, Japan, and America; a cursory survey of the size and distance, capital, principal ports, climate, defences, wealth, and power of these (the time required to complete this course ten days)." It is very hard for the Chinese literati to understand the difficulties of acquiring Western learning. Chang was a man of no mean intellect, and one of the reasons why he was so anxious to preserve Chinese learning was because he realised the destructive effect Western learning has on Oriental faiths. He hoped to preserve the ethics of Confucianism and to attach to them the practical knowledge of the West, which he realised was a necessity for China. He summed up the position by saying, "Western knowledge is practical, Chinese learning is moral."

The immediate result of this book was absolutely the reverse of what its author intended. A million copies of the book had been issued, and it circulated throughout China. It raised a storm of opposition, and probably was one of the causes which produced the Boxer outbreak; but the failure of Boxerdom and the Russo-Japanese war convinced China that Chang-Chih-Tung was right, and his book may now be taken as the book which best expresses the intellectual position of the moderate reformer.

He first deals with that very difficult question of finance. He proposes to finance the schools with a wholesale disendowment of the two religions in which he does not believe, Buddhism and Taoism. He writes: "Buddhism is on its last legs, Taoism is discouraged because its devils have become irresponsive and inefficacious." He then suggests that seven temples out of ten should be used both as regards their building and their funds for educational purposes. But he has a sympathetic way of treating the disendowed clergy of China. He suggests that they could be comforted by a liberal bestowal of official distinction upon themselves and upon their relatives. Who can tell if Welsh Disestablishment would not be popular if all the clergy were to be made archdeacons and their brothers and fathers knights. But he has a historical precedent for disendowment—Buddhism has apparently experienced the process of disendowment three times; but as the last disendowment was in 846, on our side of the world we should not regard it as a precedent of much value.

In establishing schools he adopts five principles. The first is one to which we have already referred, that the new and the old are to be woven into one, the Chinese Classics are to be made by some magical process the foundation of the teaching of Western education. The second is a very un-Western but possibly a sound way of looking at the question. He puts forward two objects of education: first, government; secondly, science. The first includes all knowledge necessary for the government of mankind—geography, political economy, fiscal science, the military art, and though he does not mention it, I suppose history. The second is natural science, and includes mathematics, mining, therapeutics, sound, light, chemistry, &c. The third principle is one that we rarely act on in our own country, namely, that the child shall be only educated in the subjects for which he has a natural aptitude. The fourth principle is one that applies absolutely to China; it is the abolition of what is called the three-legged essay, a complicated feat of archaic and artificial writing which only exists for the purpose of examination, something analogous to our Latin verses. The fifth principle shows that China is as far ahead of us in some ways as she is behind us in others. China has passed beyond the stage of free education to the stage of universal scholarship; all students are paid, and this has brought about a great abuse; men study merely to obtain a living who have no aptitude for learning, and on whom educational money is really wasted, and so he abolishes payment.

His Excellency closes his advice with a suggestion that societies for the promotion of education should be formed. The Chinaman loves these little social clubs and gatherings. His chess club, his poetry club, his domino club, are national institutions. Why not, suggests His Excellency, have an educational club, or as I suppose we should call it, a mutual improvement society. Thus wrote the great Viceroy who more than any other man prevented the spread of the Boxer outbreak from desolating Central and Southern China. During that Boxer rebellion all advance was impossible, but after that overflowing flood of disorder was passed, the reforms suggested by Chang-Chih-Tung began to be seriously considered, and on January 13, 1903, an Imperial Edict was put forth renovating and organising, at least on paper, the whole educational system of China. It would not be China if there were not a great deal of sound sense in that edict; it would not be China if on paper the organisation did not seem to be perfect; it would not be China if as a matter of fact the whole scheme were not to a great extent a failure.

The scheme was very complete. It began at the bottom and continued through every grade of education to the top. First there were to be infant schools; these were to receive children from three to seven years old, and their object was to give the first idea of right and to keep the children from the dangers of the street. These schools were to be succeeded by primary schools of two departments, and children were to enter the schools as they left the infant school when they were seven years old, and to continue in them till they were twelve. The subjects to be taught were morals, Chinese language, arithmetic, history, geography, physical science and gymnastics. At present there was to be no compulsory attendance, but that was looked forward to as the future ideal. The schools were to be free, and the money was to be produced either by taxes or by a raid on some endowments, notably endowments of religion or of the theatre—for theatres in China are endowed. Funds were also to be found by subscription, and titles and ranks were promised to those who shall open schools; unlike our own country, where, alas, the spending time on education for the poor is only rewarded by abuse. These primary schools would lead into higher schools, and these schools would be the last on the ladder of education, in which only Chinese subjects were to be taught. Above them were to be what they call middle schools, and the subjects to be taught are roughly those which are taught in our High Schools: the Chinese Classics, Chinese language and literature, foreign languages (one at least to be obligatory), history, geography, physics, chemistry, science of government, political economy, drawing, gymnastics; and after the example of Western schools, singing would be also taught. These schools lead on to the superior schools in which higher branches of the same subjects are taught. These schools were to be divided into three sections. The first section consists of law, literature, and commerce; the second section of sciences, civil engineering, and agriculture; the third section of medicine. It is noteworthy that English is necessary for those who are learning the first two sections, while German is compulsory for those who are learning the third section—in either case a third language may be added; and these superior schools were to lead on to a University, in which there were to be eight faculties. The first faculty is essentially a Chinese one, and I suppose would be best expressed to our thought by "belles-lettres," but it includes such things as rites and poetry; the second faculty is that of law; the third, history and geography; the fourth, medicine and pharmacy; the fifth, science; the sixth, agriculture; the seventh, civil engineering; the eighth, commerce.

The University course was to take three years, and there was to be a University installed in each province. The educational system was to be perfected by two other institutions—a post-graduate college where research was to be undertaken, and a normal college which was to be divided into an inferior and a superior one for the purpose, the one of preparing schoolmasters for the village schools, the other for higher education. A far less ambitious scheme for the education of girls has been added to this by an edict of 1907. If my readers have waded through this scheme I am afraid that they will have come to the conclusion that China has nothing to learn from Western powers, but rather she ought to be able to teach them how to perfect their own incomplete system of education; but alas, this scheme is only on paper. In the province where H.E. Yuan-Shih-Kai ruled the schools approach in some degree to the level of Western efficiency. In every other province that I visited or heard about, the results of this edict were markedly disappointing; the only exception being where the Universities had been organised, not in the form or terms of the edict, but by Western teachers acting on more or less independent lines. For instance, there is a splendid University which has been founded by Dr. Timothy Richard in Shansi.

That University has a curious history. After the Boxer massacres compensation was demanded by the Powers both for the buildings that were destroyed and for the missionaries that were killed. A certain number of the missionary bodies refused absolutely to take any compensation. Animated by the spirit of the early Christian Church, they would not allow that the blood that had been shed for the sacred cause could be paid for in money. At this juncture there threatened to be rather an impasse. The Western Government were insisting on compensation, and it was doubtful and uncertain how that compensation should be paid. The Chinese Government sent for the Protestant missionary in whom they had the greatest confidence, Dr. Timothy Richard, and he made a suggestion which was at once acceptable to both the Chinese and to the missionary body, that the money should be devoted to the founding of a great University; for ignorance is the most common cause of fanaticism, and the terrible massacres enacted in China would never have taken place had China understood, as Chang-Chih-Tung did understand, that Western science and enlightenment were for the benefit of China; so this University was founded. It was founded under peculiar terms. It is under the government of China, and yet not completely so. Dr. Timothy Richard is for a certain number of years one of its governors, and he has for ten years at least the control of the Western side of the education. He is supported by an able staff, and the Rev. W. E. Soothill is the existing President. At the end of the ten years which are just running out, the status of the University is to be altered, and is, as far as I understand, to return to the ordinary status of a Government University. I need hardly say that this University has been highly satisfactory in its teaching, and lately it has sent many of its students to England to complete their education. It suffers, however, from the absence of a proper preparatory course. One of the difficulties that lie right in the way of Chang-Chih-Tung's compromise is the difficulty of finding time for a Western preparatory course, and that is only equalled by the difficulty of finding teachers. Without time and teachers the students arrive at the University period of their lives with only a very elementary knowledge of Western subjects. This college can hardly be cited as a college of high governmental efficiency, but should rather be regarded as an example of the good that a man like Dr. Timothy Richard can do if he is only allowed scope.

Another Western University under Chinese Government control is the one at Tientsin, the Pei-Yang University. That University has the advantage of being well supported by efficient Government schools at Pao-ting-fu. One interesting detail about the Pao-ting-fu school—a fact indeed which in two or three ways should give us food for thought—is that it is controlled by a Christian who is allowed by the Government, against their own regulations, to carry on an active propaganda. He was the man who, when the missionaries were murdered at Shansi, at the risk of his life brought down a message from them written in blood on a piece of stuff. Perhaps it is not extraordinary to find that such a man is producing excellent work. The Pei-Yang University, however, falls far short of our ideals of what a University standard should be. Still, as far as it goes, it is very efficient. It is taught by a very effective body of professors. It has 150 students, and teaches law, mining, and engineering. The staff is American with very few exceptions. One of those exceptions is Mr. Wang, a Chinese gentleman who received his education in London. Very little philosophy is taught, only three hours a week are given for Chinese learning, and the students are expected to acquire a sufficient knowledge of Chinese subjects before they come to the University. The American professors, who proved to be a delightful set of men, allowed that there was no real scientific training given in this school. They gave the same account of their pupils which you will hear in every Chinese school. They excelled in algebra, drawing, and in the most stupendous power of committing formulÆ to memory. One of the difficulties of teaching a Chinese class is that they have so little difficulty in learning by rote that they much prefer learning the text-books by heart to trying to understand them. The Law School in the Pei-Yang University is taught by a man who has no knowledge of Chinese law. This is one of the small mistakes made by American educators in China, which I think must be somewhat misleading for China in the future. To learn nothing but Western law, and to imagine that that Western law can be applied directly to the Chinese people, is to make the same mistake that Macaulay so eloquently condemned in the old East India Company. Such a system of teaching can only make unreasonable revolutionaries.

These two examples of teaching institutions carried on under the Chinese Government by Western teachers are wholly exceptional, and though excellent in their way are unimportant, and having regard to the vast mass of the population of China are inconsiderable. What are five or six hundred students to a population of four hundred millions.

I must reserve the account of what I saw of the schools under Chinese management, including the Peking University, to another chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SAME IN PRACTICE

Any one who has read the preceding account of the intentions of the Chinese Government might be pardoned if he supposed that after four or five years those intentions had borne fruit in an efficient system of public education. But one who has resided any time in China would only smile at the suggestion that there should be an intimate relation between what the Chinese Government professes to do and what the Chinese Government does. A Manchu Professor whose European education had enabled him to appreciate rightly the weaknesses of the Chinese race, said with great candour, "In China we begin things, but we never finish them." I had the privilege of seeing over some twenty Government schools in China, and the truth of these words was very obvious.

My hospitable host at Nanking, His Excellency Tuan-Fang, hearing that I took an interest in education, declared that he would be very glad that I should see his schools. I expressed a regret that my ignorance of the language would impede me in thoroughly understanding what was being taught. He most hospitably said that I could myself examine the pupils who were studying Western subjects, and who therefore spoke English or French, and that my wife should examine the girls' schools; that we should be accompanied by two interpreters as well as by the Director of Education, and that he would examine the schools in any branch of knowledge that I chose. So we sallied forth, a very imposing body, and I was asked to select what schools I should like to visit. Of course I selected the higher grade schools in which Western subjects were taught. The first school on which we descended was the Agricultural College. The teachers of Western subjects were two Japanese and one Chinaman. They were being taught in Chinese, but I had no difficulty in finding out in the first room we entered what they were learning, because the illustrations were well known to me, for they formed part of a book of elementary botany which I had at one time studied. I suggested to Mr. TsÊng, the interpreter, that the right course would be to ask the Japanese master to select his best pupils and that then he should examine them while I should suggest the questions. It soon became clear that all the Japanese teacher was doing was to teach them to copy the illustrations in the book and nothing else. For the first time we noticed what we afterwards discovered to be the invariable rule, that the Japanese are most perfect draughtsmen, and that every class taught by the Japanese always learnt to draw perfectly, though they learnt little else. The Chinese were rather pleased that the Japanese teacher cut such a sorry figure. We then went to the next room. Again there was a Japanese teacher professing to explain the model of a steam-engine; again the pupils were obviously ignorant; again we bowed and they bowed and we left the room.

The next room had quite a different atmosphere. Obviously efficient work was going on. The men were learning elementary chemistry. The teacher was a Chinaman who had been trained in London and spoke English perfectly. He was as straightforward as he was efficient. He frankly said that the progress that his pupils had made was very limited because of the short time that they had been at work. We congratulated him on the efficient way he was managing his class, and were interested to hear afterwards that he was a Christian. More than once we came across Christian Chinese, and did not know till later that they were Christians, but were struck by their efficiency, which sprang doubtless from a high ideal of work.

We left the Agricultural College and then proceeded to a High School, which is the name that is given to a first-grade school that precedes the University, and which at present stands in its place. We had in this school much the same experience. A Japanese teacher was teaching biology and was dissecting a river mussel. This was done in such a position that only two men could see what was going on. I wondered at this. Then we found out that he could not speak a word of Chinese. He dissected the mussel and professed to give a lecture on its anatomy to a pupil who understood Japanese, and then the pupil delivered the lecture to the rest of the class. My Chinese interpreters were of opinion that very little could filter through the class in this way, but the Director of Education smiled sweetly. He obviously felt that in some mysterious way Western education was percolating to the pupils under his charge. As we returned along the corridor I glanced in. The biological lecture was over; I expect it was the only one of the session, and the pupils went away with admirable pictures of the river mussel. If the Japanese teachers only set up for teachers of drawing, I am certain they would have no equals in the world. A little further on in the same building there was a professed teacher of drawing. The class was not a selected class, they were drawing from a cast of a well-known Greek statue, and the work was simply admirable. I am confident that, except in an art school, you would not find better work in Europe. In the next room there was a science teacher. To impress the Director of Education, he rashly set a machine for demonstrating the vibration of sound at work. The machine would not demonstrate anything, much to the joy of my Chinese friends, solely for the reason that he had not wound it up.

I should tire my readers if I were to go on describing room after room. I cannot of course be certain how far these Japanese teachers had taught science, but at any rate their pupils had not acquired any knowledge, and I think we may easily be too hard on the Japanese. One must remember that they have to supply teachers for all their own schools. Is it likely that they will be either able or willing to send into other countries efficient teachers of Western education? It is not as if Western knowledge had been for long taught in Japan. Their schools are now many and they were few. I suppose no man, no great number of men at any rate, over thirty-five or forty, are equipped with an efficient Western education in Japan. One wonders why they allow their national reputation to be injured by supposing it to be possible for them to supply these teachers of Western knowledge. Political motive suggests itself as a reason why a country so proud and so ambitious as Japan should allow a course that must eventually injure her reputation as an enlightened power.

The next school we went over was very interesting. It was what is called a Law School. The men who are learning in this school will be the future officials of China; only, following the Chinese custom, they will rarely or never hold office in the province in which they were born and educated. They were men of some standing, and it looked strange to see all these senior men, over sixty in number, sitting like children at the school desks. They were dressed, in uniform, and were under a sort of military discipline. The senior pupil gave the word of command, and at once the class sprang to attention and saluted us, while we bowed first to the teacher, then to the class, after which the examination began. They were chiefly taught by Chinese, and, as one might expect, were well taught in the Chinese Classics. We were informed that the Japanese teacher was teaching them Western law; but in answer to an inquiry he explained that he had not yet taught them any law, but that he was teaching them the Japanese language, since it was through the Japanese language alone a knowledge of Western law could be attained. The reason seemed very inconclusive especially when one remembers that the Japanese know and write Chinese characters, so that it is easy to get any work that is printed in Japan printed in the character which every Chinaman can read. I have before explained the peculiar merit of the Chinese character is that people who speak different dialects and even languages can read it equally well. I pointed all this out to my Chinese friends. I think their suspicions too were aroused. Certainly this experience lends colour to the suggestion that Japan hopes that the Manchu dynasty will be succeeded, not by a Chinese dynasty, but by a dynasty from a race whose courage, energy, and intellect has already humiliated Russia and China, and may not inconceivably dominate China, should, for instance, Germany and England go to war.

We then went to see some classes taught by Americans. Two things struck me in those classes. First, for some reason I cannot understand, unless there was jealousy at work, the class was small compared with the enormous classes which I had seen elsewhere—thirty, twenty, or even fifteen were the numbers that white men were teaching. The other thing which struck me was that the selection of subjects might be improved. For instance, one of the teachers was teaching Anson's Law of Contract; one could scarcely see how a knowledge of the English law of contract could be very beneficial to a resident in China; and on looking over the book that another class was using, I found that they were being instructed how to buy an advowson in England. I cannot of course say that the class was actually taught this interesting information, but it was certainly in their text-book. Another text-book was a summary of the history of the world; it was issued by an American firm. On looking up the chapter which referred to China I found the most extreme expression that an American democratic feeling could prompt used with regard to the Emperor of China. I pointed this out to the Chinamen. Apparently no one had taken the trouble to glance through the books that were being used. Such action is regrettable, because it inevitably brings Western education into disrepute, and suggests it to be something essentially revolutionary.

Another curious experience was to find a Cantonese Chinaman teaching a science class in English because he did not know Mandarin. It will be one of the limitations to the usefulness of the Hong-Kong University that the bulk of the students who attend it will be Cantonese-speaking Chinamen, and they will therefore be inefficient as teachers to the great mass of the Chinese empire. A University which hopes to produce teachers which shall teach the whole of China must be a University situated in Mandarin-speaking China.

It was waxing late after we had seen these schools. We had consumed a great amount of the day in partaking of a most excellent Chinese luncheon, where the only mistake I had made—at least the only one of which I was conscious—was in not being instructed in the nature of the entertainment. I had yielded to the solicitations of my host and had partaken largely of the first two or three courses. Later on in the luncheon I was divided between the desire to be polite and a fear that the capacity of the human body might be exceeded. Our host was the Director of Education, and my interpreter whispered to me that he had a great knowledge of cooking and that "he loved a dry joke." His skill as a Director of Education, especially of Western subjects, might be doubted; but as a kindly host and an amusing companion he would have few equals in our country. This aspect of the Chinese official too often escapes the Western critic; whether efficient or inefficient, they are always agreeable men. After luncheon he begged to be excused, as he had a visit of ceremony to pay; it was the birthday of a dear friend's mother. His official robes were brought out, and clothed in them he took his seat in a sedan chair and left us.

We were taken on, rather unwillingly I fancied, to see the Commercial School. The hour of the classes was over, but still the school was really instructive. What was so remarkable about it was the extreme simplicity of the place where the boys lodged. The school is not maintained by Government, but by the rich Silk Guild of Nanking. Many members of this Silk Guild, I was assured, would only be able to read and write enough to carry on their business. They are a rich and powerful body, and this school is intended for their sons. The dormitory was a slate-covered building without any ceiling, and the beds were arranged like berths on board ship, one on the top of the other, with narrow passages between them. In this way, of course, a room was made to hold a perfectly surprising number of individuals. I could not help remembering the Church Army Lodging-house at home. If we arranged the beds as they were arranged in that room, though we should double or treble the number of travellers we could house, we should incur the wrath of the sanitary authority.

Very different was the Naval School. Here reigned efficiency, for the Naval School is under the partial control of two officers lent by His Majesty's Navy. The limit of their control was the limit of their efficiency. For instance, the Chinese Government sometimes refused to let their naval officers be shown an actual ship; their idea was much the same as that of the lady who forbid her son to bathe until he had learnt to swim. The difficulty was very great for anything like practical instruction. Continual representations induced the Chinese Government to allow the boys to have a trip on the river in an old ship. The moment this was accomplished there was great self-congratulation on the part of the Chinese official; from resisting this reasonable suggestion they changed to self-laudation at the wisdom of accepting the plan. The efficiency of the teaching was not only hindered by the want of practical knowledge, which is of course fatal to naval efficiency, but these officers had also to complain of what so many other Europeans have to complain—first, that the people whom they were sent to teach did not know enough English, so that much of their time was spent in teaching elementary English; secondly, that their classes were not large enough. Far away the most effective way of using a Western teacher would be to use them as we saw them used in one school. The Western teacher was supported by two or three Chinese assistants; he gave his lecture in English, and the pupils took notes; then the assistants went round the desks, looked at the notes, and explained in Chinese all those points that the pupils had not fully taken in. This plan has another advantage, that it trains these Chinese teachers to continue the work of a Western teacher, and in some ways it is a more efficient system than the normal schools. The Western teacher of course exercises a general supervision over his class and maintains order and discipline.

While I had been busy with the boys' schools, my wife had been busy with the girls' schools. She was taken over the Viceroy's School, the one already described where the little girls showed such surprising knowledge of the Chinese Classics. Her experience was less happy than mine. The children were being drilled by a Japanese instructress who could hardly play at all; she used a small gem harmonium, and the drilling was little better than a feeble country dance. The same instructress was responsible for a singing lesson; she played with one hand on a harmonium, and allowed the children to bawl as they pleased without either time or tune. All the pupils at this school were day scholars.

The interpreter who conducted Mrs. King, the Consul's wife, and my wife over this and the following schools had removed his own daughter to a mission school, thinking she would receive better teaching. As regards the musical part of the instruction there can be no question but that he was right. The next school she saw was also for the children of the gentry, who supported it by subscriptions. There were 140 girls, fifty of whom were boarders whose parents paid for their board. These fifty young ladies all slept in one room, and their toilet arrangements impressed my wife as anything but luxurious; the effect was more like a steerage cabin on a big liner than an ordinary school dormitory. The class-rooms were all on the ground floor, leading from courtyard to courtyard in Chinese house fashion. The instruction seemed to be mainly Chinese, with attention paid to geography, drawing, and fancy work, English being taught by a young Chinese teacher in a rather elementary way. The mistresses appeared in dignified skirts, no doubt as a symbol of authority.

The last school she was shown was larger and less exclusive. It was well organised, the classes being arranged with sense and discrimination. There were 200 pupils of all ages and ranks, the school being a public one. They were mostly dressed in black. Ten lady teachers presided over this school, including a normal class with a male superintendent; the whole in Chinese buildings. The teaching comprised Confucian ethics, the Chinese characters, arithmetic, geography, drawing from flat copies, and English given by a young Chinese girl who had been educated in a Shanghai mission school.

The instruction seemed to be good on the whole. About one-fourth of the scholars boarded at the school. Attached to it was a kindergarten managed rather sleepily by two Japanese. Again the children's singing was hardly worthy of the name. My wife was impressed by the inferiority of the Government girls' schools to the mission girls' schools in almost every particular. Doubtless they will soon improve, but at present the Government does not seem able to obtain efficient teachers, and is much too inclined to spend vast sums on practically useless apparatus—useless because the instructors do not understand how to use it.

Our experiences at Nanking were extremely interesting, but they were not exceptional. We saw over Government schools at Wuchang, again at Changsha, and also we saw something of the Peking University. At Changsha matters were not nearly so far advanced as they were at Nanking. There were the same Japanese teachers, one of whom taught English, but I could not get a single copy-book produced to show how far they had advanced in the knowledge of this language. There were the same American teachers; good men, but unable to do much owing to their want of knowledge of Chinese, and owing, as I said before, to a certain jealousy which prevented them having a sufficient number of pupils. The very excellent school which is carried on at Shanghai, under Western management, forms a good contrast to the others. This school does not profess to teach very advanced subjects, but it teaches ordinary English subjects most efficiently. The system is this: the boys are first taught in Chinese, while they are acquiring the rudiments of Western knowledge and of the English language; they are then transferred to a class which is taught in English by Chinese; here they acquire from their own countrymen a very thorough knowledge of English and a tolerable knowledge of Western subjects. In both these divisions of the school all explanations are given in Chinese. After they have acquired a good knowledge of English they are then advanced to the class which is taught by an Englishman, who has some knowledge of Chinese; here they perfect their knowledge of English, and the teacher can if necessary explain a difficulty by the help of a Chinese word. Lastly, they are taught absolutely in English by an Englishman who need not know any Chinese, as it is never used.

At Wuchang the schools were similar to those of Nanking. The only school which was exceptionally interesting was the School of Languages. This was managed by a Manchu, who was prompt, exact, and efficient—in fact, the very greatest contrast to the usual Chinese official. He spoke French perfectly, as he had been brought up in Paris and spent some time in the West. In a few words he showed that he understood the problem of education in China. He told me that his nation would never succeed in teaching their nationals Western subjects until they selected teachers who had some experience in the knowledge and in the art of teaching, and that the habit of regarding all Westerners as capable of teaching all Western subjects must produce disaster. He boldly professed himself a Roman Catholic, and was one of several examples that came under my notice of the wonderful influence that Christianity has on the formation of a vigorous character. The boys had been very well taught in English and French, and I gathered in German and Russian as well. Certainly if China gets such men to lead her, she need have little fear of the power of the West.

CHAPTER XXIV

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF EDUCATION

The difficulties in the way of education differ in Government schools and in Mission schools. If the Chinese Government could unite the Government schools to the Mission schools, they would overcome all these difficulties, and they would have a most perfect system of Western education. Of all the difficulties lying in the way of Government schools, first and foremost is the fundamental weakness of China, that weakness which is endangering her national existence, a weakness which I fear she will never completely surmount until she accepts a higher ideal. For her weakness is the universal greed for gain. Resident after resident reported the same cause of weakness, that a Chinaman cannot resist taking his "squeeze"—that is, his commission. It is not of course so dishonest as it would be on our side of the globe, because a Chinaman is more or less avowedly paid by these commissions, and therefore in many ways they are rather equivalent to the fees paid by an Englishman to a Government office than to illicit commissions, the acceptance of which in this country is punishable by law. If it is not as immoral, it is almost as deleterious to efficiency, because it tends to make officials unreasonable in their action. To ask the reason why things are done in China, is always to receive the answer that somebody got a "squeeze" thereby.

And so it is with education. As we wandered through room after room filled with apparatus sufficient to teach thousands of students, and of such a complicated nature as absolutely to confuse those students when taught, one longed that a tithe of this expenditure could have been used for that modicum of apparatus which is necessary to make not a few mission schools thoroughly efficient. Much of the apparatus has never got outside its packing cases, and perhaps a great deal had better permanently remain there, for nothing is so subversive to the proper teaching of men whose great defect is that they have never handled things with their hands, as to give them complicated apparatus to demonstrate the most recondite laws of science. A great scientific teacher, when consulted about the apparatus necessary for elementary science, advised plenty of bonnet wire, glass tubes, and one or two other little things of that sort. When one asks why the Chinese have been so lavish in their expenditure on apparatus which they cannot and will not use, the reply is the same old answer—somebody got a commission. Bui I think beyond that there is a real belief that education is a matter of expensive apparatus—a belief which is not altogether unknown on this side of the globe.

This brings me to the second great difficulty in the path of Government education. They will believe that an efficient education results rather from having an expensive building than from a competent teacher. I have before had occasion to refer to the extreme simplicity of the life of the Chinese. Many of the schools were housed, and very comfortably housed, in Chinese houses. The Chinese house always looks out on a courtyard, and courtyard is joined to courtyard by passages. The rooms are only divided from the courtyard by carved wooden screens whose interstices are sometimes filled with paper and sometimes not. They are eminently sanitary—in fact, to a large extent they fulfil the requirements of the "open-air cure." In one case in the courtyard were a lot of basins and ewers, and the boys were compelled to have a wash, which if extensive must, in the winter, have been extremely unpleasant. For all this I expressed my sincere admiration to my friend the Director of Education, but he received my compliment much in the same spirit with which a mother accepts your assertion that her child is far prettier in her every-day dress with tousled hair than she is in her Sunday clothes, as with hideous tidiness and pharisaic pomp she wends her way to church. My compliment was taken almost as an insult. I was then shown the ideal of China, a huge and hideous building, modelled on the architecture which white men deem necessary to enable them to support the tropical heat, to the fatal effects of which they are so sensitive; massive walls to carry the heavy roof; huge arched verandahs where white people may get the breath of air they so need. Of what use are all these to a race who cannot understand what you mean when you speak of the heat being unhealthy, who, however sensitive to cold and wet, flourish in the warmth to which they have been accustomed all their lives? The Chinese do not admire this architecture for its Æsthetic effect; they care little about its heat-resisting qualities. They like it because it is Western; because Western people are educated in such buildings; because, I suppose, they expect Western learning to work in some way through those massive stone walls to the minds of the pupils; and because they fancy Western ideas would be more easily understood in these hideous surroundings.

Thirdly, there is no serious effort made to get good teachers. At one time, I understand, they had in their service a very remarkable body of men—men like Professor Martin of Peking—whose knowledge was only equalled by the sincerity of their purpose. Lately they have been getting rid of these men as fast as they could, the cry of "China for the Chinese" being perhaps responsible for this movement; and they have endeavoured to replace them by Chinese subjects with but little success. They have therefore fallen back again on foreigners, largely on Japanese. These men are some of them very able and qualified teachers; some, on the other hand, have had little or no experience of teaching, and their inefficiency tends to bring all foreign teachers into disrepute. Not only must the teacher have a special knowledge of the art of teaching, but a teacher of a race like the Chinese, with different traditions to our own, must well understand those traditions. We can best realise the enormous difficulty a Chinese student has of learning from a Western teacher by remembering how impossible it is for any of us to understand something that is put from a Chinese point of view.

If the Chinese Government want efficient foreign teachers, they must not pick up anybody, but they must hold out inducements to young men to come as teachers, and must give them security of tenure. If, for instance, the Chinese Government had in their service such an efficient body of men as could be found in the mission schools, they would have no difficulty. Another difficulty which stands in the way of the Chinese schools is their want of discipline. One of the most remarkable developments in China is the school strike. They have undoubtedly extraordinary powers of united action, but the school strike originates as much in the weakness of the teachers as it does in the remarkable power the Chinese race has of united action; you hear of it all over China, and it is sometimes ludicrous, sometimes serious. One school struck because the foreign teachers required the pupils to pass an examination of efficiency before they would give them a testimonial. This was deemed most incorrect by the scholars, who held a doctrine which would be very attractive to our own undergraduates, that residence alone was a sufficient qualification for a degree. Many of the strikes take place for most occult reasons.

And this brings me to mission schools, for strikes take place equally with them as in Government schools. They occur in boys' and in girls' schools, and for the most un-understandable reasons. In one school the strike began because a Chinese teacher caught hold of a boy's queue and dragged him by it. The boy's "face" was injured, and his companions made common cause. Another strike took place in a girls' school because a girl was punished. Of course these strikes do not occur where there is an efficient and vigorous teacher. It was attempted, for instance, with Archdeacon Moule, but it only ended in the leaders being caned. Still, one mission had its school practically ruined by one of these strikes; it was the result of an intrigue by an unbelieving teacher who had been employed by mistake. These strikes are not a very great difficulty to the mission when it is in charge of efficient and experienced men; a little justice and firmness apparently soon disposes of any unreasonable resistance to authority, and tact and knowledge prevent any friction which may result from regulations that may be offensive to Chinese ideas.

A far greater difficulty in the mission schools is the question of finance. The Chinese for the most part pay their scholars; the result is that the mission school has to compete not only against a free school, but against a school in which pupils are paid to come, and it appears as if it would be almost an impossibility for mission schools to support themselves against such competition. As a matter of fact it is usually found that so great a value do the Chinese put on the efficient education that they receive in the mission school that they are willing to pay a reasonable fee rather than be paid for the useless education given by the Government school. Still it makes finance a certain difficulty. Many of the schools are largely self-supporting; others rely on fees to find board and lodgings for the pupils and the salaries of the native teachers. So that every school more or less carries a great financial burden.

The great difficulty of mission schools at the present time springs partially from Government action. The ideal of every Chinaman is at present to be in the service of the Government; we must emphasise that word "at present," because undoubtedly, owing to the railway development of China, a wealthy commercial class must arise all over her land, as it has already risen in the great port towns. This class will be independent of Government and will be the class that needs Western education more than any other class, for they will be in intimate contact with the West. But at present those who seek a higher education hope for the most part for Government employment. One of the rules of Government employment is that the officials shall on certain days repair to the various temples to represent the Emperor, and it is naturally held that such action is impossible for a Christian. Besides this, the Government makes it extremely hard if not impossible for a Christian to go to its University at Peking. All teachers and pupils in a Government school are required on the Emperor's birthday to bow down or kow-tow to the tablet of Confucius. Missionaries hold that such action is not consistent with the Christian faith, and therefore the mission school is very loath to send its Christian pupils on to the Government University.

It must, however, be stated that several Chinese scholars, including a Christian, have indignantly denied that the kow-towing to the tablet of Confucius implies anything more than the respect due to the greatest thinker that China ever possessed. We had the privilege of being shown over Peking University by an extremely able and pleasant Chinese gentleman, a Christian. He showed us the tablet of Confucius and explained to us the ceremony. It must be owned that externally there was but little that one could associate with the idea of divinity. The tablet was behind a glass case, and at first it suggested some sort of educational apparatus. The desks were placed at right angles to it, so that it did not actually occupy what could be regarded as the chief place in the room. The gentleman who showed us over strenuously denied that any of the pupils in Peking Government University could regard Confucius as God. None were admitted to the University except those who were already well versed in the Chinese Classics, and they knew perfectly well that in these Classics Confucius said that he had no supernatural power; while the leading commentator on Confucius, the man whose teaching had more than any other influenced modern Confucianism, was avowedly an agnostic, and therefore, so far from regarding the tablet as divine, it would be nearer the truth to say that the greater bulk of the scholars disbelieve in the idea of God altogether, or at any rate hold an agnostic position with regard to it. When I put these difficulties to an eminent missionary the answer was, yes, but by a late edict they have made Confucius equal to heaven and earth, and so whatever doubts there were before have been resolved, and the Chinese Government has decreed to Confucius divine honour. I put this criticism to an able civil servant in the employ of the Chinese Government, and he answered that that decree was really intended to have the opposite effect. The Chinese are aware that they are as a matter of fact relegating Confucius to a secondary place in education, and they are therefore most anxious to propitiate the Confucian scholars. They have compromised the matter much on the same system that we use in the West with regard to some politician whose services have been valuable, but who is actually a hindrance in the House of Commons. Confucius has been given divine honours as the worn-out politician in England is given a peerage; it is a form of honourable retirement. A very intellectual Chinese, however, expressed himself quite otherwise, saying that anybody who understood Chinese views would have grasped the meaning of making Confucius equal to heaven and earth. As heaven and earth induce the wealth of mankind, so has Confucius done by his teaching; as heaven and earth can change things and make things exist that were not, so with Confucius; but that Chinese theology regards heaven and earth as created by the one God, and therefore Confucius is put in the position of an exalted but a created being. What impresses perhaps the Westerner more than this rather recondite Chinese reasoning is the simple fact that while by the Government edict it is decreed that the tablet of Confucius shall be honoured by three bowings and nine knockings, it is also ordained that the schoolmaster shall be honoured by one bowing or kow-tow and three times knocking the ground with the head. The similarity of the salute to the schoolmaster and to the tablet of Confucius rather disposes of the idea that the act of reverence to the tablet involves worship. On the other hand, it is pointed out that this is the main ceremony that is observed in what are called the temples of Confucius; but when this was put to a Chinaman, his answer was that they were not temples, and if there had been any worship in those temples, they would have been frequented as much by the women and children as by the men, but as a matter of fact they were frequented only by literati. When it was suggested that on occasion, however, there were sacrifices in these temples, he did not deny this, but changed the subject.

But we must not say that the respect and reverence offered to Confucius, whether it involves idolatry or not, is the only reason why Christian pupils are advised not to go to the Government Universities. There are two other great reasons. The first is an extremely practical one: the education in Government Universities is avowedly imperfect. The fact that the Government have subscribed to the English University at Hong-Kong and to the German College in Shantung show that they are aware of their own shortcomings. The second reason is that the racial characteristics of Chinamen demand that they should act as a body. An acute observer asserted that, as far as he was able to judge the matter, no Chinaman ever acted independently; and that therefore it is putting a burden greater than the race can bear to ask that Christians should maintain their Christianity when they are surrounded by an unbelieving and heathen atmosphere; and that, as a matter of fact, the result of sending students to Government Universities would, except in cases of men of very strong character, be to send them to unbelief. Yet a greater and simpler objection is that these Government Universities for the most part do not exist, and that it is impossible for small institutions like that at Peking to take even a hundredth part of the students who are clamouring for Western education. But the mission schools have another and a newer difficulty, one which is causing the greatest heart-searching. This I must reserve for the next chapter.

The great danger that threatens mission schools, a danger which is increasing every year, is that the best pupils of these schools have to go to Universities in search of Western knowledge where they are exposed to the insidious attacks of Western materialism.

The teachers have at present no alternative; they have to send the best and brightest of their pupils somewhere to complete their education. It would be unfair on a boy to refuse to send him on, and if he is to receive a higher education, where can he get it but at some place where the atmosphere is distinctly anti-Christian.

There is in the East no place with a neutral atmosphere as there is in the West. In the West most people have had some Christian training, or at least they comprehend Christian ethics. So in a Western institution, even if the education be wholly secular, a Christian does not find everything antipathetic to his faith. But in the East the vast majority are non-Christian, and consequently the moral and intellectual atmosphere is hostile and antipathetic to a Christian. Here if an institution is non-religious it is probably not hostile to religion. In the East if an institution is non-religious it is probably anti-Christian. At present the only University in action is that of Tokio, though we are promised others, and its ill effects have been so obvious that the Chinese Government have ordered a wholesale withdrawal of pupils from its unhealthy influence.

As we have already pointed out, Western civilisation is magnificent but it is destructive, and when taught without any constructive religious teaching it inevitably tends to destroy all spiritual ideas and too often also to pervert the moral ideals of the race. As the pupil goes through the mission school he learns within its walls to shake himself free from the haunting fear of demons which besets every Chinaman; he has slowly realised that God is holy, good and loving, and has either accepted Christianity or stands on the threshold of the formal acceptance; he has reached the end of the curriculum of the school or college and his brilliancy demands a higher education. Attracted by the reputation of Tokio, he goes to its University, and there he finds himself in an atmosphere where all the destructive thought of Europe grows rankly; the good God in whom he has learned to believe in the mission school follows in the track of the demons of his youth, and he is left believing in a world founded by blind chance, where ethics are things of service to restrain your neighbour but folly to follow yourself. "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," is the lesson which is not perhaps taught in so many words, but which none the less is forced into his mind; his views become those of Falstaff; all that is fine, all that is noble, flees from his life; though he no longer believes in the God of Love, he does not return to the belief in the demons of his youth; there is nothing in his world beyond getting rich or gratifying the flesh and laughing at those people who believe in higher ideals. He has been acquainted with and has learnt to loathe from his youth up the philosophy of Yang Choo. He has, for instance, despised such a sentence as this: "The people of high antiquity knew both the shortness of life and how suddenly and completely it might be closed by death, and therefore they obeyed every suggestion of the movements of their hearts, refusing not what was natural for them to like, nor seeking to avoid any pleasure that occurred to them, they paid no heed to the incitement of fame; they enjoyed themselves according to their nature; they did not resist the common tendency of all things to self-enjoyment; they cared not to be famous after death. They managed to keep clear of punishment; as to fame and praise, being first or last, long life or short life, these things did not come into their calculations." And now he finds that the philosophy of Yang Choo is as he supposes the newest thought of the great rich successful Western world; as he returns to his home and spreads abroad the poisonous doctrines that he has imbibed, the missionary wonders whether, after all, it would not have been better to have left the man to his primitive demonology.

The American mission bodies saw this danger from the first, and have already set up great educational establishments which to a certain extent supply this need. That great institution Bishop Graves' College at Jessfield, the Boone College at Wuchang, the British College at Weihsien, and Methodist Universities at Soochow and Peking, are all examples of good work. But they do not, any of them, bring the student up to what we call University standard, or what I understand is called in America the post-graduate course; what is felt is, that there is need of an institution in which the highest knowledge shall be taught, where the true aspect of Western thought shall be shown—not that aspect which is bringing France to destruction, not that aspect which makes Belgium unconcerned at the Congo scandals, but the aspect which both in America and in England we have always admired at least in theory, and in practice when we have been strong. The fundamental truth on which our civilisation rests is that God is good, and that therefore truth and progress are right and possible, and that the highest expression of the goodness of God is in His incarnation as it is universally taught by Christians of various views and of many denominations. The West owes to the East, if there is any common duty of man to man, to set before it the real truth as to the greatness of Western civilisation, namely, that it is the result of Christianity.

But missions are not anxious merely for a University as a means of defence against the materialistic onslaught which threatens their work—they need it for many other reasons; for instance, the University would make it possible for all denominations to have highly educated native ministers. No student of missions can ever be content to regard them as an ideal arrangement. The conception of a race being ministered to spiritually by another race is obviously inadequate; it is open to many criticisms; there must be a confusion in the mind of the convert between what is national and what is Christian; one Chinese regarded Christianity with doubt because he had heard that the German Emperor is a Christian, and to his mind he is the embodiment of the fierce piratical Western races. The word which the Chinese use for robbers means red-bearded men, so associated, alas, is the Western race in China with war and rapine; it is easy for a member of the Western races to be misunderstood when he is talking about the religion of love. Would any English parish like as its Rector a Chinaman, even if he were saintly and went so far as to cut off his queue?

Setting aside the associations of the Western race, the Western race has great difficulty in speaking Chinese without making ridiculous mistakes. Who among us has not smiled when the Chinaman's inability to say the letter "r" has caused him to offer us "lice" to eat, but what must it be to the Chinaman when he hears the Western preacher lost amidst those mysterious Chinese intonations, and therefore making some wonderful statement. A Chinese gentleman assured me that he had listened to a missionary extolling the virtues of a wild pig. Reverence forbids explaining what was really meant. If the ministers of religion are to be Chinese, it is obvious that they must be highly educated Chinese; to have religion taught by ignorant men in a country like China where learning is reverenced so profoundly, must be to condemn it as the religion of the coolie. The Chinese minister must be able to maintain his position, not only against the Confucian scholar, but against the Western materialist, and must therefore have an equally good education. Without saying that it is reasonable to expect that the Western missionary should be withdrawn within the next few years, I think it is wisdom for every mission body to aim at founding a body of educated native clergy who can free Christianity from the taunt of being a foreign religion, and who can, when the foreigner leaves China, take his place and uphold the faith.

If to have an educated native ministry is one great object of the University, another great and only less important object is the creation of an intellectual Christian laity who shall form and direct Christian public opinion. The school teacher, the writer, are only one degree less important, if indeed they are so, than the Christian minister; and if as China assimilates Western civilisation, she finds in her midst a body of men conversant with the best side of that civilisation, able to interpret its mysteries to her, so that it does not become subversive to all spiritual religion and morality, it is more than probable that she will take those men and put them in high positions, and the grain of mustard seed will by their means grow into a plant which shall overshadow the whole of China. The other day I was reading how St. Grimaldi and St. Neots founded the University of Oxford in 886. Theology, grammar and rhetoric, music and arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, were the subjects taught. After a thousand years we are in a position to judge of the success of the experiment. Surely every one will wish to have a hand in founding a similar undertaking.

The foundation of this University cannot for two or three reasons be left to one body. In the first place, no one communion will be rich enough to undertake such a work; secondly, it might cause a certain narrowness of atmosphere; thirdly and chiefly, co-operation among Christians would afford an object-lesson to the Chinese of the real unity there is between them. We are constantly twitted with the fact that we confuse the heathen by professing the religion of love and then setting before them a mass of warring sects. If we can unite in the founding of such a University, we shall show that though we see the Christian truth in different aspects we have agreed that truth is one, and have in spite of our divisions a fundamental unity. When this matter was referred to at the Shanghai Conference, considerable difficulty was felt among missionaries as to the terms on which such a University should be founded. It was agreed to refer it to the Committee on Education, and that Committee of Education has in the year 1909 welcomed the formation of such a University. Dr. Hawks Pott, who of all men in China can best speak as an authority on education, since he has organised and maintained that wonderful institution at Jessfield, warmly advocated its formation.

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.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE NEED OF A UNIVERSITY EXPLAINED (continued)

The Committees at Oxford and Cambridge had not been without hope that the missionary world would accept the scheme readily once it was well understood.

They had had the advantage of many interviews with missionaries and others in London at their joint meetings so as to make it a matter of some certainty that a large portion of the Western educators of China would agree with them. But they were rather doubtful whether the scheme would be welcomed by the Chinese official world.

The commercial world in London that had dealings with China was rather pessimistic. They held the view that you only had to mention the word Christian or missionary to a Chinese official and it would have the same effect that the word rats has on a terrier. But as I have before related, we were agreeably surprised to find at the very outset that the Chinese official world were far from hostile, and that we were given, unasked, letters of introduction, whose contents I did not know except that they procured for us a welcome in China which was as surprising as it was delightful. I learnt in China that knowledge and learning is so loved and respected that those whose object is its dissemination will ever find a ready welcome, and I learnt also that whatever may have been their sentiments in the past, in the present the Chinese have no hatred towards Christianity, but they regard it as one of the least odious parts of the Western civilisation which has become for them a necessity. I had also the privilege of seeing His Excellency Tong-Shao-Yi in London, and he did not discourage the plan.

When we arrived at Harbin we found an official ready to receive us who had been sent to welcome the scheme to China. His instructions were to accompany us to Kwangchangtzu and to watch over our comfort. As he only spoke Chinese, conversation was difficult; but with the aid of a member of the Imperial Customs we gathered the object of his mission. At Mukden we met with a similar civility. I was invited to dine at the Yamen. I shall always remember my drive to that dinner. At Mukden no carrying chairs are used, but a springless cart, in which the traveller, or more accurately the sufferer, reclines. I was late for dinner, so the order was given to the charioteer to drive quick, and as we bounded over the unpaved streets of a Manchurian town I had an opportunity of realising one of the minor discomforts of Chinese missionary life. At the Yamen the same civility was shown to the scheme, and next day Dr. Ross, my kindly host, took me to see a Manchu noble of high rank. He was more than encouraging. He first sounded the note that I found vibrating through the whole of China. He asked why did not the West concern itself with such things as education, which benefit man, rather than with war, which produces such endless suffering and misery.

At Peking I met some great officials who all were favourable, but it was not till we got south that we encountered what can only be described as enthusiasm for Western education. One gentleman advised that such an institution should be started at once, and recommended the recall of all students studying in Western lands to fill its ranks. Another who was interpreting was not satisfied with the prudent official reply I received that the plan was good, but that I must make inquiries at Peking. He added: "Make inquiries at Peking; but if they refuse, go on with your scheme all the same." A body of young men who had been educated at Boone College sent a petition that the scheme should be forthwith undertaken, but perhaps the most remarkable experience was that which I had at Shanghai. I was entertained by thirteen of the gentry who had all received their education in the West. We discussed every aspect of the plan, and when I pressed upon them that one of the good results of the University would be that it would have a healthy moral environment, an old man turned to his companions and said: "We have ourselves had experience of this. The environment in which we lived when we were in the West was different from that in which we found ourselves when we returned to Shanghai, and did not it largely affect our lives?" After we had talked some time the question was put plainly to them: "Would they support such a University?" One of them turned round and said: "Of course we should. It is obvious that if you will give us in China the same sort of University as there is in England, if only on the score of expense, we shall want to send our sons there; besides which no one likes parting from their children and leaving them in a distant land."

I discussed the matter with a Chinese statesman in Peking. I asked whether Peking would not be a good centre, but he was very adverse to the idea, because he said that Peking had such a bad moral tone that boys would not be able to do any good work, and that he himself far preferred that Chinese boys should be sent at ten years old to England to receive their whole education in our country. When we pointed out to him how, except in the case of a few rich men, such a course would be quite impossible, he said: "Then put your University right away in the western hills out of reach of the immoral influences of a town." There can be few more eloquent testimonies to the necessity of another University; nothing but a Christian University could succeed in creating the moral atmosphere, which this wise man saw was the power of the West. In the same conversation he gave a further testimony to the power of Christianity, all the more striking that it was uttered by a man who was not a Christian. He said: "Yes, I have no doubt that all that is good in the West comes from Christianity."

All the officials we interviewed always ended their encomiums on the suggested scheme by a saving clause to the effect that, before we did anything, we must ask his Excellency Chang-Chih-Tung. When we passed through Peking the first time we failed to see him, and it was therefore with some anxiety I sought an interview with him on our return journey.

Chang was a figure in the politics of China whose importance it would be hard to over-estimate. Not that he had the reputation for being a peculiarly able man; in fact, some of the Europeans spoke slightingly of his mentality. His force and influence came rather from his moral qualities. He was the perfect type of Confucian scholar.

Wonderfully well versed in all the knowledge of the literati of China, he was far from despising any form of knowledge; in fact, he was one of the first of the statesmen of China to recognise the importance of Western education. When we were discussing with some leading merchants the want of integrity of many of the officials, they claimed Chang as an exception with enthusiasm. He had held the highest offices and still remained comparatively poor. His reputation for clean-handedness was enhanced by his age. In China the old are greatly reverenced, and an old, honest, and learned statesman combined three of the qualities most admired in China.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I found myself going to see a man whose moral authority was so great that he could with a word mar or make the University scheme as far as the power of the Chinese officials extended, and in his case this was very far. I was alone, for owing to the rather heated debates that divided the British and Chinese Governments over the Canton-Wuchang Railway, it was thought advisable that no member of the Legation should come with me. I drove down to the north end of the city, and turning down a by-lane, scarcely wide enough for the carriage to pass, we drew up opposite a very modest dwelling. I was received by His Excellency's nephew, a man of extremely courtly manners; and as he conducted me across the yard I was struck by the simplicity of the house. The room, for instance, into which I was ushered had a brick floor, and was separated from the courtyard only by a paper and wood screen. Imagine what the intense cold must be in a Peking winter when the thermometer is somewhere below zero! The furniture of the room was equally simple. Two Chinese chairs of the Chinese guest-room pattern, standing on each side of the usual Chinese table, were supported on the other side of the room by a token of the ever-encroaching West in the shape of a common round table and some mongrel-looking stools, which looked as if they were productions of Japan palmed off as European.

As we sat and talked (for I was too early for my interview) my host told me all about his uncle's family, and the while I wondered at the austerity of the dwelling of the greatest man in China after those of royal blood.

His Excellency was then ready to receive me, and we adjourned to another equally simple room where the usual table with tea, sweetmeats, and wine was laid out. Chang during the whole interview smoked a long pipe, which required all the efforts of what I took to be two boys, but who really were slave-girls, to keep alight. He wanted to know where the money was to come from. I assured him that there are many generous people in England and America who, desiring to leave a good name behind them, and convinced that education confers on humanity incalculable benefits, are willing to give largely to such a cause.

Then he inquired what line we should take with regard to Confucian learning; I said Christianity and Confucianism need not be opposed, and we should respect and encourage the teaching of the sage. He clearly approved, and gave me advice as to the course of study to be followed—first, Chinese letters, then foreign languages; and he advised as the site for the University some place near Wuchang and not Peking.

He then assured me that I might tell my countrymen that he approved of the scheme. "Who," said he, "could but approve of such a scheme?"

As I left he accompanied me across the courtyard, though I protested, and I felt I had been honoured by this interview with one of China's greatest men. He was the embodiment of all that was fine in China. He belonged to an age that is passing away. The Chinese statesman of the future will learn Western luxury with Western knowledge.

CHAPTER XXVII

CONCLUSION

One word in conclusion. I have tried to show the greatness of the crisis that is before us. The civilisation which has long been worn by the white man alone is now being donned by the yellow man, not as the result only of missionary effort, but as the result of those great world causes over which puny mankind has no control; and I have tried to show that all that we can do is to recognise and frankly accept this great fact, namely, that the members of the human race who are subject to and governed by our civilisation are to be nearly doubled, and that the second half will import into that civilisation not only new traditions, but a new racial personality, which must cause a fundamental alteration in many of its traditions and customs. We must not say that the movement will be shortly completed, for it has scarcely yet begun; but we have seen enough in the success that has attended the movement both in Japan and in China, to convince us that it will ultimately dominate the Far East. This movement may be for good or for evil; it may be for the downfall of the world, for the perpetual misery of mankind, if that which is evil in both civilisations is to be perpetuated and that which is good is to be destroyed; or it may be for the benefit of mankind if, when the Christian civilisation welcomes the great yellow races, it accepts from them, as it has accepted from many other races, their characteristic virtues. Hitherto our civilisation has grown richer; every race it has conquered has added beauty to its traditions and nobility to its ideals. We may look forward with hope, if not with confidence, to its future. But if this momentous change in the history of the world is to be well directed, it can only be done by men of sincere Christian faith; and if the civilisation is to augment these benefits to mankind, it can only be by being more fully endued with the Christian ethics on which its whole greatness depends.

For the perpetuation of this ethic, for the education of the future thinkers of China, we suggest a University is needed; that University should not be founded by one race alone. Some may differ from us, and hold that other action is advisable. They may be right, but it behoves them to formulate their policy, because one thing seems certain—that a policy of inaction at the present moment is one which is fraught with risk, if not with disaster. If no one makes any effort to direct the thought of this vast unit of mankind into the right paths, it is improbable that good will naturally result. The fitting of Western thought to an Oriental race, while it must be chiefly left to the race itself, needs clearly the help of those who are conversant with the best aspects of that Western thought and of its history. The missionary has done much, but he himself is the first to say, "I cannot do all; I must be supported by those who will teach my converts the fulness of Western knowledge." And so the missionaries have inaugurated a policy of education which is most successful as far as it has gone. The question before all well-wishers of China is, shall it go further; shall we show China the intellectual light by which we are walking, or shall we leave China to stumble in the darkness till she falls into deeper error.

Those who look forward to progress in this world must also look forward to breaking up the old evil traditions and to founding new ones; the old tradition, which limited love to citizens of the same State, which put bounds on charity, so that man did not love man unless he spoke the same language, or at least had the same coloured skin, is dying fast though it is dying hard. A new tradition is being founded, and must be further developed, in which, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the word love is taught as passing and transcending all bounds of race and language. The cultivation of this new tradition is vital to the existence of our civilisation. If love cannot bind races together, the improved arts of war will in time extinguish the civilisation that gave them birth. If we are to encourage international love, we can best do it by sharing together in international acts of mercy and generosity. The great Chinese race has need of the wealth of Western knowledge. Let Western races join together to give them what they need, and in so doing they will not merely benefit China, though as China counts for a quarter of the population of this world, and is nearly equal to the number of men who have a right to call themselves civilised, that were no small merit; but they will do more, for they will by common acts of mercy and love bind each to each so that the horrid curse of racial hatred shall not be again able to divide them. The elements of good in one race will be brought in contact with the similar elements in another race; men will learn to trust men; and that which the thundering cannon can never compel, or the keenest wit of statesmen ever compass, will be accomplished by the obedience and simple faith of the Christian men and women of all races, and the world will be welded into one solid piece, where men can work without wasting their efforts in making machines to torture and kill their fellow-men, and where at last the prophecy shall be fulfilled: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks."

APPENDIX

WILL RUSSIA BE REPRESENTED ON THE MISSION FIELD?

When it was settled that we should go to China to see what opportunities there were there for an educational mission emanating from our English Universities, we decided to go vi Siberia, and stop at St. Petersburg and also at Irkutsk on the way. I had previously found the journey of fifteen days without a break exhausting to myself and still more so to my wife who accompanied me. The plan had also the advantage that it gave me an opportunity of trying to find out why the great Russian Church had never attempted any serious mission work in China. From a mere inspection of the map one would naturally have expected that the Christian power which had a frontier with China of thousands and thousands of miles would have been the most forward in that country in fulfilling the command of the founder of Christianity to give His message of happiness to every living man. In our previous tour we had been surprised to find that the missionary efforts of Russia were insignificant in China, though, strange to say, they were fairly vigorous in Japan. When we arrived at St. Petersburg I was fortunate enough to obtain letters of introduction to the courteous gentleman who then represented the imperial power in the councils of the Russian Church, M. Iwolsky, Procurator of the Holy Synod. One thing became evident; for the time being Russia is so much absorbed in politics as to be oblivious of other duties. Living in England, we can little realise the excitement and anxiety that filled the minds of many who dwelt in the far off villages of Russia, while they waited to hear whether or not they were to be engulfed in a revolution as dangerous and as far-reaching as that which more than a hundred years ago overwhelmed France.

A lady described to me how she had sat in terror in her country house when all communication from St. Petersburg had ceased owing to the strikes, while the smoke of surrounding houses which had been set on fire by marauding bands told of the fate which might possibly await her. Now all that is over. The revolution—so they think in Russia—is a thing of the past; and Russia has entered on a course of conservative reform to which, if she adheres, will doubtless make her a prosperous and contented empire.

I gathered from some of my informants that the reasons why Russia had been backward in the mission field, and also why she was racked with revolution, were in reality the same, namely, that the Orthodox Church was not so vigorous and had not that hold on the consciences of the people that it ought to have. Not that for one moment Russia is ceasing to be religious. The attendance at Father John's funeral was quoted as disproving such a possibility. People of the working and middle classes came for miles to stand on a bleak cold day for long hours merely to catch a glimpse of the coffin which contained the mortal remains of a man who, according to their belief, lived more than any man in accordance with God's law. Russia is religious to the very core; but, like all religious nations, our own included, she longs to express her deep sincerity through diversity and not through uniformity. Alas! there are people in every nation who want to put us in one religious uniform and to march us like soldiers at the word of command straight into heaven's gate. In England this view only makes some good and narrow-minded people anxious to have such a thing as religious uniformity in our schools; but in Russia this doctrine has been more vigorously held, and is doubtless responsible for the waning power of the Orthodox Church. Mr. Pobiedonosteff, leader of the reactionary movement, nearly caused a revolution, and certainly weakened the Church, by insisting on Uniformity and Orthodoxy. He believed that there could be but one form of religion in the State, and therefore he discouraged every other form of religious activity. Not only did he rightly forbid those strange wild immoral sects who practise and teach mutilation, but even the sober and devout followers of Lord Radstock were to be silenced. The result of such a policy was but too obvious. Religion was made odious by the insincerity which such a policy must foster, and the State became detestable to all earnest Christians who claimed the inherent right of every living soul to love and worship his Creator in accordance with his true convictions.

All this has now passed like a bad dream. People in Russia may believe what they like and worship God how they like. M. Iwolsky was most anxious that the world should know that he, the then representative of temporal power in the councils of the Russian Church, so far from encouraging the idea that Christ's Church can be controlled by a temporal power, however great, was most careful to maintain that in spiritual matters the Church is independent of the State, even if in temporal matters she submit herself to the authority of Government. Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchate; he added many, though not all, of the powers of the Patriarchate to the Crown; and therefore the Emperor represents the Patriarch in many ways. But it is wholly misunderstanding his position to say that in spiritual matters he is supreme. The Russian Church, like all other branches of the Church, is controlled and governed by councils, both general and provincial.

But M. Iwolsky had to confess that the power which the State wielded in the Synod of the Church was still very great. The Crown has three ways in which it can influence the council. First, though the members of the council are representatives of the Church, it is the Crown who decides (with the exception of the Metropolitans) who those representatives shall be; secondly, the Crown, through the Procurator, can forbid any action which brings the Synod into conflict with the laws of the State; lastly, the Procurator, as representative of the Crown, must always be present at the debates of the Synod, and has always a right to express his opinion, even on spiritual questions. Such powers put together clearly give the Crown a control not only in things temporal, but, if it is desired, an influence in things spiritual as well. Still it cannot be too widely known that at any rate in theory the Russian Church is in things spiritual independent of temporal power. Most Englishmen would think, no doubt, that if the Church is to hold her rightful place in the hearts of Russians, she can only do it by relying on the power of preaching rather than on the power of the sword. Therefore it would be best for both Church and State if they had less to do with one another. English Churchmen will be glad to hear that there is some prospect of a Synod of the Orthodox Church being held, independently of the existing Holy Synod—a council which may rank as a General Synod of the Greek Communion, if other branches of the Orthodox Church are invited to join in its deliberations, of which there is some prospect. The object of this Synod will be to reform the discipline of the Church, a matter which is engaging, I understand, the sincere attention of the devout Christians of Russia. Few things bear truer witness to the weakness of the Church in Russia than the low moral tone which exists, as all witnesses aver, in every grade of Russian social life. The outward observance of the fasts and feasts and ceremonies of the Church, though admirable in itself, is perfectly consistent with a great deal of scepticism with regard to the truths of Christianity. It is not uncharitable to suspect such scepticism when a great profession of Christianity is accompanied by a low moral tone. The Church has felt her weakness and has sought the help of the State, and has therefore not succeeded in her mission.

Now happier days have opened for Russia which it is hoped may lead on to happier ones beyond. The State no longer helps the Church by silencing her critics, by exiling those who cannot agree with her: the Buddhist who lately at the definite command of the Government had accepted Christianity has returned to sincerity and open profession of Buddhism. The Church no longer so supported by the State may feel her weakness, but she will grow rather than diminish in strength as she learns to use more and more the real weapon of Christianity, namely, the sacred truths of our religion published both by writing and by preaching. Russia is one of the great nations of the world. The Orthodox Church which dominates Russia is both true and faithful, and she will guide her people into prosperity and peace when she has learned to follow her Master's example and to order the sword drawn in her defence to be returned altogether to its sheath.

Nothing can be at present expected from the unorthodox bodies who until lately have been persecuted to such a degree that they have scarcely been able to exist. In external matters the Orthodox Church commands the obedience of the nation to a wonderful degree, but in controlling the deep convictions of the heart she lacks power. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the moral tone which prevails in Russian society. Perhaps it is not just or fair to take the capital of Siberia as a specimen of ordinary moral life in Russia, but one might well say at Irkutsk that all save the spirit of man is divine. We had been to a certain extent prepared by our previous tour to disbelieve in the horrors of the climate of Siberia, but what we saw and heard at Irkutsk has convinced me that Siberia should rank high among the places that are reckoned pleasant for human habitation. Siberia, or certainly the eastern part of Siberia, is not the dreary plain, wind-swept and miserable, that one read of in one's childhood. On the contrary, it is a land of constant calms and steady sunshine, a land of lakes and hills, and though it is cold, the cold seems but trifling in the glorious sunshine of a Siberian winter. I feel certain that if Lake Baikal were somewhere within reach of London it would be one of the most frequented centres for pleasure-seekers. And from the point of view of wealth it is a most favoured land; a land where there is gold and where there is coal; a land where there is copper and silver, and where a hot summer ripens thoroughly all cereal crops. For sportsmen it seems a veritable paradise. The pheasant (or at least his brother) with whom we have long been conversant as dying of every disease in the moist coverts of England, lives wild in this dry and healthy climate. The wild boar and the wolf, the bear and many forms of the antelope and deer, are to be found on the borders between Siberia and China. The rivers are full of salmon and other fish whose names I cannot attempt to give.

If an Englishman were asked to choose whether he would live in St. Petersburg or in exile at Irkutsk, he would, I believe, have no doubt in deciding in favour of the latter, if—and that is a great if—the spirit of man were not so human and corrupt. We were told that there are six hundred women who are divorced in the jurisdiction of Irkutsk. Such a statement indeed seems incredible, but certainly the morals of the officers leave much to be desired. Vices go in flocks, therefore laziness perhaps accounts for the amazing state of things which exists in Irkutsk. The town is as full of officers as Eton is of boys. Epaulettes jostle you in the streets, you tumble over swords in the restaurants, and with all this force at the disposal of the authorities—for I conclude that some at least of these officers have soldiers under them—the streets of Irkutsk are unsafe after dark. Person after person warned us of the danger of being unarmed at night, at any rate in the by-streets. People are murdered in their own houses in the suburbs; women have their fur coats torn off their backs. One is aghast at the incredible slackness of the authorities, who instead of instituting a reasonable police force such as exists even in Chinese cities, allow the city to be watched at night by aged Dogberrys in huge fur coats armed with rattles which they use incessantly. Certainly, though they may fail to frighten away robbers with this primitive weapon of protection, they succeed in interrupting the slumbers of the visitor. In the department of municipal activity the town is equally badly organised. The streets were under snow, and as upon a hard-seated sledge we leapt from hole to hole, we had at least the comfort of realising that in summer their condition must be even more trying.

It is unsafe to trust gossip, but I give it for what it is worth. We were assured that the only reason why the priceless wealth which Russia possesses in the gold mines of Siberia was not further developed was because of a similar official incompetence. There is said to be a great deal of secret digging for gold. Men disappear in the summer and reappear in the autumn with a pound's weight of pure gold, for the gold lies only about three metres below the ground. But if this primitive form of mining came to the knowledge of the Government it would put in force the mining laws which would then successfully stifle the industry.

It is needless to add that profligacy and laziness are not the only vices against which Russian Christianity has to contend. Their people have another in common with ourselves of which the Church is only too well aware and which it is making great efforts to suppress, namely, drunkenness. Actually on our journey we had an example of this vice which every one regarded as comic, but which might have been tragic. The train is brought suddenly to a standstill. There is something wrong. Everybody tumbles out of the carriage to look. A man is lying in the snow. At first it is thought he has been knocked down by a previous train. Further examination shows that it is only a man dead drunk lying right across the line—the result of keeping one of the festivals of the Church. Every one laughs; he is pulled out of the way, we climb back into the train, leaving him in the care of a priest, quite unconscious how near he has been to death. Drunkenness is a terrible evil in our own land, but its results are far more terrible in this land of frost-bite. There are numbers of people without hands and feet begging in the street, and we were told that the general cause of these injuries was vodka. A man going home falls into a drunken sleep on the way: he awakes next morning with his hands and feet frost-bitten, or perhaps he never wakes again: the sleep of drunkenness merges into the sleep of death.

As one considers these things one realises why the Buddhist Bouriat and the Mohammedan Tartar still adhere to their ancient faiths.

I do not think an Englishman has a right to criticise other nations when so much remains to be done at home. Still one cannot truthfully say that, however numerous her churches or well-attended her services, the Orthodox Church directs Russia while she is powerless to make headway against these vices.

The great trials through which Russia has passed hold out every reason to hope that with liberty, purity of worship will be again established, and where there is purity of faith there must be mission work. No doubt the Government has hindered mission work; in fact, they have forbidden it in China. Christianity was to them so much the handmaid of the State as to be inconceivable outside the State; but all this is breaking down. The great mission work conducted in Japan to which I have before referred has shown that the Orthodox Church grows well on Eastern soil. The existence of a village preserving the Orthodox religion in the middle of China which has been spoken of above, has demonstrated at least the vitality of that faith among the Chinese nation. When the Russian missionaries cross the frontier they will not leave their own country weaker, but their work will be a token that Russia is purifying her faith and is advancing along the road that leads to holiness.

INDEX

="@public@vhost@g@html@files@41878@41878-h@41878-h-3.htm.html#P186" class="pginternal">186, 187, 187 Napoleon III., 47 Native ministry, 257, 259 et seq., 310 Naval school, 52, 287 Need of University explained, 305 et seq. Nestorians, 15, 149, 150, 248 Newchwang, 8, 205 North China Mission, 203

O

Obedience of Chinese, 61 Obedience to parents, 74 Observatory Ziccawei, 195 Official rank for Roman Catholic Missions, 188, 189, 191 Officials, Chinese, 167, 172, 283, 299, 317 Officials, French, 184 Old, reverence for the, 321 O-mi-to, 149 Opium, 107 et seq. Opium, edict against, 117 Opposition to Western materialism, 258 et seq. Organisation of Chinese Government, 60 Orientals, 36 et seq., 61 Orphanages, Roman Catholic, 193, 194, 264 Orthodox Church of Russia, 244, 245, 330 et seq. Oxford and Cambridge, 173, 312

P

Pagodas, 141 Pao-ting-fu, 7, 276 Pastor Hsi, 158 Patience of Chinese, 72 Patriarchate, the, 331 Pei-Yang University, 276 Peking, Blind Mission at, 229 Peking Gazette, 168 Peking, interviews at, 319 et seq. Peking, Lama Temple at, 180 Peking, Methodist University, 308 Peking, missions at, 203 Peking, Mongol Temple at, 150, 180 Peking, Roman Catholics at, 197 Peking, sack of, 10 Peking to Canton railway, 89 Peking, Union Hospital at, 226 Peking University, 291, 300 Pe-T'ang, the, 140 Physical science uninteresting to Chinese, 182 Pidgin English, 22 Pitt, 187 Pobiedonosteff, M., 330 Police, different nationalities of, 101 Port Arthur, 53, 54, 62, 73, 81 et seq., 118, 126 Yuan-Shi-Kai, His Excellency, 274 Yunnan, 92

Z

Zenana work, 131 Ziccawei Observatory, 195, 196