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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
was replied by the spokesman of the English | Foster, of Wuchang,
April 20, 1901.
quarrel? Is the man who furnishes the ammuni- Mission that they were only too thankful that the Spectator to dates in a recent letter
if he advises, is he not taking part in the tion and loads the gun a less active combatant than him who fires it? A well-known mis- sionary in North China, Mr. Candlin, thus describer and comments on the practice in a letter, published some years ago in a daily newspaper :–“ A missionary,” he says, "receives report from one of his Church members that his heathen neighbour is persecuting him. He applies to the mandarin, who refuses to see him. Then he goes to his Consul. His Consul reluctantly refers it to the higher Chinese authorities. They send down a wen shu ordering the local mandarin to step parsecution. The native convert has never appealed on his own account to the mandarin, On examination it may or may not turn out a bogus concern altogether. Ten to one it is an insignificant affair. But the remoter con- quances are not insignificant. The Christian has been taught to lean upon a protection he is not entitled to, the heathen feels that he is being tyrannised over by the hated foreigner, who, according to his notions, has no business to be in the country; the mandarin has been snubbel for no fault of his own; the higher officials feel that in admitting the missionary they pulled down a house over their heads; and the consul wishes the missionary and his peddling concerns far enough." #
Testimony of this characteris worth more than its face value, if we consider the professional bias which had to be overcome before a working mis- sionary could bring himself to make such a public declaration, and the risk of obloquy incurred by any individual in any profession who casts rollec Honon his cloth. It is well also to bear constantly in mind in this connection, that all we know about mission affairs is from the missionaries themselves a circumstance which places us at an immense disadvantage in forming our opinion. The other side is never heard. Such hints as we do get from native sources deserve the more attention from their rarity; and in cases where they happen to coincide with the expressed views of missionaries, the agreement possesses a special signifiance, A Chinese literate, in an anti-Christian tract, gives his version of the mis. sionary procedure so nearly identical in terms with that of the candid writer just quoted that we can hardly evade the conclusion that they are both speaking the truth. "The missionaries," he says," without sufficient knowledge of the real facts of the case, and deceived by the ex parte statements of their converts, are in the habit of coming forward as their protectors and openly assisting them. It often happens that they hide away the defendant in a suit in order that he may not appear in court, and in certain instances when the guilt of an offender has been conclusively proved and his punishment decided on, they in the most public manner have con nived at his getting away to a foreign country, with the result that he is not to be had, and the case remains in abeyance."
No doubt the missionaries do their best to dis- criminate between the true and the false in all such cases, but "for ways that are dark and for tricks that are vain the Christian Chinese is peculiar," and, thanks to his foreign instruction, is several degrees 'cater than his heathen brother.
Nor can it be said that such action of the Protestant missionaries is a thing of the past; it never was in fuller activity than it is at the present moment. Quite recently there was a communal fend in the neighbouring province of Kwangtung in which the adherents of an English Mission were so far victorious as to inflict damage and loss on the heathen party opposed to them. Seeing they were getting the worst of the fight, the latter took counsel of their elders, and went over in a body to an American Mission in the same district, claiming its protection. The ceremony of baptism was presumably deferred for closer examination into
the merits of the sudden and wholesale conversion, but the protection was not delayed on that account, and demands for restitution ore promptly preferred against the raiders. The Chinese quarrel thereupon resolved itself into negotiation" between the two foreign ssions as to the number of buffaloes and pigs been stolen during the feud. To the why they recognised the American missionaries—who are keen on the dollar--as respresentatives of the Chinese claimants, it
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the discomfited heathen did not go over to s French Mission, as in that case more arbitrary proceedings might have been brought to bear on the dispute.
anythin
of the Taiping Rebellion doubts that, if it had succeeded a pronouncedly Christian ment, of a sort, would have held away over all China. No doubt its Christianity would for The confessions of "missionaries leavé time at least, have been something of a manner of doubt that these interferences are travesty of New Testament Christianity, but habitual among them, that their converts the rulers would not therefore have either are in the habit of palming off on them in hated or persecuted Christiang of the ordinary volved and one-sided stories, whereby the Western type." The same writer also claims unwary missionary is led to compromise the reform movement of 1898, which heralded himself in disreputable transactions. practice is so firmly established, and is so well Christian missionaries, meaning of course Pro- The the uprising of last year, as the work of understood by the Chinese that, in the testants. So far, therefore, from contending that north, south, and centre of China, it is no uncommon thing for whole villages to become
the Protestant propaganda is non-political, it Christians as a strategic move in some old-
were nearer the truth to sifirm that missionary standing fead. It comes as natural to them missionaries may of course claim, like everyone work is political through and through. The as castling the King at a particular stage in else, the right to propagate political as well as the game does to a chess-player. The value religious doctrines, but they cannot blow hot and of the missionary factor in village warfare cold in the same breath, nor escape the natural may be overestimated by the Chinese, but consequences of their acts. If they aim at sub- their faith in it seems to be amply attested by verting the existing polity of the empire under their acts. Whole villages do not go over to cover of the protection accorded to them in the Christians without a cause. They do not their religious character, they must expect the propose to serve God for nought.
fate of those who attempt to sit on two stools. They will degrade their religion without ac complishing the political purpose to which they have prostituted their Christian principles.
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quoted may not be out of place here. Mr. A further observation on the letter just Arnold Foster makes the sweeping asser- tion that "No one knows anything of the Taiping Rebellion donbts that if it had suc- ceeded a pronouncedly Christian government, of a sort, would have held sway over all China." Now, I do not pretend to know much about the Talping Rebelion, Lut if personal contact with it, and subsequent reflection can teach one any- thing, I may claim to know at least something of that movement, and I, for one, entirely dissent from Mr. Foster's confident predicate. I consider Taipingism as anti-Christian as the worship of Baal, and would as soon believe that a pronouncedly Christian Government would have come out of that movement as that an eagle could be hatched from the egg of a turtle. (To be continued.)
Where transactions of this character con- stitute part of the routine of missionary work, where purely native affairs are settled by the negotiation or adjudication of foreign officials, it is obviously trifling with words to maintain that Protestant missionaries refrain from in- terference in the secular affairs of the Chinese. The Canton Missionary Conference state the case with perfect frankness. In a letter published in the newspapers a few days ago, they claim, in explicit terms, the right of in- terfering in Chinese judicial procedure where native Christians are the litigants. They con- tend, of course, that this is done in the interests of justice, but for any foreigner to assume on his own sole authority to be the arbiter of what is just and unjust in a Chinese quarrel, and insist"-for that is the word-on the Chinese Magistrates dealing with their own people in a particular way, is to disintegrate the sovereign authority of the empire, and to reduce ita ad- ministration to chaos. The Canton mission- aries base their pretensions on the wording of the American treaty, which provides that "those who quietly profess and teach this doctrine shall not be persecuted on account of their faith, and that any Chinese convert who peace- ably teaches and practises the principles of hristianity shall in no case be interfered with.” By a liberal interpretation of these words, the Canton missionaries appear to have persuaded themselves that they hold a commission to lay down the law to Chinese Magistrates, as well as to their own Consular authorities, in purely Chinese matters which have
Mr. R. Cooke presided, and among those no relation present we noticed, Messrs. Kinghorn Jack, whatever to "the faith' "+ ciples of Christianity."
or to "the prin- Sinclair, Murphy, Mumford, Kirkwood, Brown- We doned the observation that such a faculty of Innes, Soppet, Stirling, and Mr. Smith, Chief may be par-hill, J. Black, W. E. Dauby, G. C. Anderson, self-persuasion, though valuable in certain Engineer, U.S.S. Concord. spheres of human activity, is rather to be distrusted when thrown into contact with such delicate and complex problems as arise out of the relation of China to the rest of the world.
But it may well seem supererogatory to labour such points of detail in tnission practice seeing the whole drift of the propaganda is avowedly to effect a revolution in China. In the words of Dr. Faber, a learned Protestant missionary of Shanghai, recently deceased :- The Chinese fully realise that the propagation of this religion concerns nothing short of the very existence of the Chinese peculiar theory of life in its entirety "that is to say individual, social and political.
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We know also that the political aspirations of missions whenever circumstances favour them take higher flights than the management of tribal fonds. The Jesuits in the 18th century plotted, to depose one Emperor and instal another, and thereby brought about the so-called persecution, and the expulsion of all missionaries. The Protestant missionaries in the 19th, espoused in a body the cause of the Taiping Rebellion. They hailed the movement. as the "Christian insurrection," and did their best to encourage it and to ingratiate themselves with its chief, who, however, refused to have anything to say to them, and expelled them with violence.
To this day, the rebellion in claimed as triumph of missionary teaching. Mr. Arnold
LIQUID FUEL,
ITS UTILIFY AS A PROPELLING POWER. The lecture room of the Institution
Engineers and Shipbuilders of Hongkong was Lambert, the Superintending Engineer of the well filled on the 13th inst., when Mr. John Cosmopolitan Dock, read a most exhaustive, and at same time exceedingly interesting, paper on " Liquid Fuel."
introduced Mr. Lambert who illustrated his The Chairman in a few well-chosen remarks paper by a number of pencil drawings and dis- more with the mechanical uses than with the grams. At the outset he said he wished to deal chemical composition of the fuel and its gases. and in so doing had to rely not only on what practical experience he had had in that branch of engineering, but also on information collected, by study, and information gathered from en- gineers with whom he had come into contact, who had been able to give any experiences on the subject: nor did he wish to extol the advantages of the use of liquid fuel, without encountered thereby, He, however, ventured to considering the disadvantages or the difficulties hope that the small amount of information collected might not be without some interest to the members of that institution, and might at all events form the basis of a profitable and interesting discussion.
It was only within the last few years that liquid fuel had come within the province of British engineers, owing to the fact that
itherto it had only been practically obta
vicinity of the Carplai
rendered it
obtained kad