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HÙNG HONG DAILY PRESS,
TUESDAY JULY 23, 1935.
THE FIRST CHRISTIANS IN CHINA
What Was The Gospel Preached?
At 'Sunday's evening service in Union Church, continuing the com- memoration of Christianity's first coming to China, 1300 year ago, the Rev. John Foster preached the following sermon:-
the
Jesus Christ the same........" A study of Christian teaching in China 1300 years ago. »
What was the Gospel which these Arst Christ'an in China preached? People who talk glibly about preaching the gospel to every creature often fail to realise the. difficulties which have to be over- come before one can make a start, As Christianity spread westwards, from Palestine and Syria, through Asia Minor, to Europe, there was no language barrier. Greek was universal language of trade, politics, education and religion in the eastern section of the Roman" Empire. In all the cities Greek language and Greek thought were as familiar as English language and European ways are, in Hong Kong, Singapore and Colombo. Further wes Latin was more widely known, but the transition from Greek to Latin, kindred languages, was easy. We who come to the service of the Younger Church of China have an initial difficulty unknown to St. Paul We undergo the dreadful dis- cipline of reining in our eagerness to get on with the job, of sitting down with a language teacher for three solid years, and then of be- ginning to preach with only halt- ing accents. Unlike Greek and Latin, the change from our langu age to Chinese is radical. You have to turn your thinking inside out in order to do it. A simple illustration will suffice:
When I knew enough to manage my servant and get along with my Iriends I came in one day hot and tired. "You haven't any tea ready. have you" I said to the cook. "Yes", he replied. "Then I have some." "There isn't any-I had asked. "You have not any?". and he had replied "Yes, you are quite right I have not." But at first you feel as if you were standing on your head.
They made use of all that God had thus provided. Their attitude to pre-Christian religions was the attitude of the missionaries of the first century. "God left not him- salt without witness" (Acts xiv. 17). Like the great apologist of the second century, they believed that "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians" (Justin Martyr. Indeed they were following our Lord Himself, who said. "I came not to destroy but to fuld”
THE HYMN OF THE SAVED Thus the Christian religion ap- peared first in China in full Chin-
ese
dress. There is one hymn which has survived from the eighth century. It is called "the Hymn of the Saved to the Trinity." If you read it even in English trans- latton, you will feel how Chinese it la. It is only when you look be- low the surface that you recognise it as a faithful translation of the hymn which has come down in Latin to us in the West, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo."
The same is true
of the brief outline of faith with
which the Tablet begins. It is Chinese. You have to look deeper than the surface similarities with Confucianism. Taoism, and. Bud- dhsm, to see how Christian it is.
|
When Christianity" first appear- ed in the Roman World, there were already many Mystery religions: many of them told of a God who had passed triumphantly through death. By union with him men might share his fe, which was Life Indeed. The way to union was cleansing and a sacramental meal.
The He was Lord and Saviour. Christian religion must have stem- ed just one more of these many sects. It came to men with words and ways which were already familiar, familiar as the deep needs i of their own hearts. In China too, Christianity came along the best.. approach-the shortest way to the hearts of men. Many would think It another- sect, similar to the schools of Buddhist thought. Some even now doubt whether we ought to claim connection with this first mission to China, or celebrate this thirteen hundredth anniversary at all. Was Chinese Nestorianism pure Christianity they say? listen, and see if on this ancient Chinese Tablet we can find that Gospel which has never falled to move the heart:
Then
၂။
FIRST MISSIONARIES The Arst missionaries thirteen hundred years ago had to do far more than that. Theirs was the tremendous adventure of attempt- ing for the first time to find terms in this radically different language to express, without loss, without THE BEGINNING AND END change, eternal Christian truth. It begins by saying that God is The Bible Soclettes have strange "the beginning and the end, the stories of translation work in o- first and the last." Then comes dern times: Here is a tribe with the work of Creation. This opens out a word for "sheep" because the with a curious sentence, "He ap- animal 1s to them "unknown.pointed the cross to deterinine the There is a language with no un-four quarters." North, south, east, tainted word for "love" because and west as the first act of crea- their lives are so Justful. And tion, foreshadowing the cross! without the Good Shepherd and the Strange superstition, you say. Yet love which lays down His life where
is it strange, or is it true, to believe is the Gospel you have come to thas the love of God. fully revealed preach? The Chinese language in the cross, began to be "perceived had no such gaps. But it was so through the things that are made" different, and the thought behind (Ro. I 20) because i telongs to the language belonged to so new God's very nature? a direction. What name shall they 123€
for "God"? (Christians in China are still divided into three groups over this one item. What term for salvation for Church and ministry, for Word and sacraments, for the Chris.ian life and the Christian hereafter?
They introduced a few new words of their own making: Some were
a
success. Others seem more questionable. "A-lo-ah," a trans- iteration of their own Syriac, they used" for "God." They made a
Chinese phrase which sounds very
means
like "Messiah" for Christ." Thelf translation of "the Holy Spirit" la more strange: "spirit" breath or wind, and they translated "Pure Wind King." not a very satisfactory attempt.
Fortunately they did no, need fo cout.nue the making of this brand- new vocabulary very far, or they "m'ght have had more and worse failures. China was not a re ligious vacuum. Religious terms
·
The Creation, the temptation, and the fall, in spite of Chinese language, closely follow the old stories of Genesis I and III. The story of the Incarnation. I must read to you as it stands. You will see that it follows," just as closely. St. Matthew's Gospel, chaps. I and II:-
"As darkness (the darkness of sin) gathered men lost their way, until confusion was beyond re-
turn
Whereupon one Rerson of our Trinity became incarnate.
|
|
summed up the Law and the Pro- phets, and which He said should not pass away. These three stand together in the "Teaching or the Twelve Apostles, one of the oldest. Christian books outside the New here Testament. And there as they are spoken of as "the way of life. The three are, Love the Lord thy God. love thy neighbour as thyself, and the Golden Rule.
Matt. XXII 371 and VII 12).
The crucifixion, death, descent to Hades, resurrect'on, and ascension are all here, though in Chinese terms at first, not easily recognised. For example the resurrection is thus described. "He rowed Mercy's Barge up into the Courts of Light.
"The scriptures were left in twenty-seven books-that is the number of books in our own New
J Testainent.
The "Kingdom of Heaven is en tered by "holy baptism of water and the 'Spirit." The baptised are "sealed with the cross, uniting all without distinction." In the mon-" asteries no slaves are kept, no class is recognised, there is no private wealth. They "fast in secret” and "watch" as our Lord commanded. They worship “seven times a day”— that is, at the times known in the west as the seven canonical" hours. "Each seventh day (Sunday) "we sacrifice to cleanse the heart and to regain our purity." This is the Eucharist, the heart of Christian devotion right down the ages,
In all this there is no compromise. with.
nor borrowing from Bud- dhism, except the many Borrowed terms. The faith is the same as that St Andrew was, preaching in Northumbla The practice is that of his monastery at Holy Island, Making it Chinese has not changed 1t.
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If any should still doubt whether this first Chinese Christianity was Pure Christianity, was our Chris- tianity, let us put it to the ulti mate test-not only with our lips but in our lives" What was the IN ideal of the Chritslan life which they upheld before men? The Tablet, says.
"That men may be complete, nople, and pure,
tranquil, single-hearted, and. forgiving,
ertending compassion to save all who are distressed.
ready to offer pardon to all the ving:
süch are our great principles of moral discipline,
such is the grádual process of drawing and leading on."
And
near the end of the in- scription is praise for one who has indeed realised this ideal in his Hfe. He has given away his wealth, conferred by a grateful Emperor, for the endowment of churches and mirasteries. But not only so:
"Still more did he devote him- "self to the Christian faith" in love
benefitting others.........
The hungry came and they were fed.
The cold came and they were clothed.
:
The sick were healed and raised up.
The dead were buried and laid to rest."
Can one doubt that to this Chris- tian, so long ago in China; our Lord's promise was fulfilled? "Come ye blessed of my Father. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye d'd it unto Me."
There is one sentence on the Tablet which seema "to
the the
The Illustrious Honoured-one-happlest description of such a re- Messiah.
ligion. I should like to feel that it described what religion means to you and me
hid away His true majesty and came into the world as a man. › An angel proclaimed the joy. A Virgin bare a Sage in Byria. A bright star was the propiti- ous portent.
(We) Persians saw its glory and came to offer gifte THE NEW
"Worshipping towards the sun-
rise,
we hasten pn the road to Late and Glory.",
CAR DRAGGED FROM
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An old autombile, recently dòng.........|| ged from the bottom of the Bud- son River channel near New York City where it had been submerged more than ten years, was found equipped with four pneumatic tyres still containing air, the ander has advised the B. F. Good- rich Company, Akron, Ohio, USA,
THE NEW RELIGION- from the Confucian classics, from The Messiah "fulfilled the Old Tao st mysticism, and from Bud Testament...and established dhist devotions were ready to the new religion.
This new TO hand. They felt that it was Chin ligions, not of "good works", but ese Buddhism which had done most of "High faith-there you get the
prepare the way of the Lord hall-mark of St. Paul. For here they found the idea of
The Buddha had taught about angels and heavenly powers, of m the Eightfold Path, eight stages of carnation, and a fant foreshadow-moral discipline atting a man for 1g of the Trinity. They found a Nirvana, which means "Blessed- doctrine of salvation from the sins ness. Christ "determined the and sorrows of this world to an salvation of E'ght Stages" He had inner peace. They, found an or-eght steps towards blessedness-- Although rims and wire wheels ganisation with abbots and monks,he Beatitudes....
were almost entirely rusted away, comparable to the monastic system. The Buddha had left as summary the tyres were remarkably preser- of their own Church. They found of his relig ous teaching the Four ved and seemed to have sufficient the disc pline of the religious life, Noble Trutha. Christ, "says the pressure, for actual road service which develops from initation, Tablet, revealed the gate of the observers said. through many stages towards Three Constants, unfolding life che Buddha-hood, they felf, the goal, and destroying death." These are, the Go to be in some sense the same as I think, the Three Great Com :| tyres had ther own union with the Divine, mandments with which our Lord | 1921.
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