The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-09-18
The CHIMES WHO THEY ARE
DISCO URSE DELIVERED BYREV. j.
LEE MITCHELL.
AT the Grand Avenue Congregational
Church Last Sunday Evening, sept. 10
"A Very Interesting Talk About This
Ancient 81 " St erin ua

Shufch Lhst sunday Evening, sept. 4
"A Very Interesting Talk About Til
Ancient and Mysterious People.
THE Chinese, Who They Are" wa
the subject of Rev. j. Lee Mitchell
sermon at the Grand avenue Congrega
tional church Sunday evening. His tex
was Isaiah 49-12. Mr.. Mitchell's dis
course in full was as follows:
Now that the legations have proved
not to have been murdered by China
the largest grievance of the white maj
against her seems to me to be that t,
the already impossible catalogue of thu
things man ought to know about sh,
has added her own unfathomable self
To be sure, the missionaries have beer
4 telling us for years about this people
innumerable as it is old and wonderful
and the thoroughness and accuracy OF
their information and judgments stand
unmpeached, but, like the ambassadors
of to-day, we have not paid much at
tention to missionaries. Now we have
! got to learn, for God is certainly
thrusting their fate upon us.
To begin with, then, who are they?
There Is no harder question connected
with them. They are not cousins nor
second cousins of ours. The flood may,
/ suppose, to-day be regarded as the be-
ginning of modern history, but the Chi
nese began before the flood and were
uninterrupted by it. They have neither
descent from nor relation to the three
races of Shem, Ham and Japheth repre-
sented in Scripture as surviving from
that catastrophe, and from which the
great nations of civilization easily trace
their blood. The Chinese have records
of the flood as a period of freshet and
catastrophe, but not as by any means
wholly destructive of life. The idea is
not now new to anybody that the food
was not universal and that the Bible
does not represent it so, but only as ia
tai to that portion of the earth and race
of men with which the Bible history is
dealing. The Chinese certainly are not
descended from Noah. That they are
even descended from Adam may be
questioned, though biologists, physiolo
gists, philologists and their kin do
mainly incline now to regard all exist
ing mankind as having descended from
one original pair, But the Bible itself,
with it's obscure hints like 'sons of God
and daughters of men," cannot be quot
ed for strictly one race theory
Politics even has had its influence on
the discussion. Here in America, under
the bias produced by slavery, we devel-
oped a school of scientists who held to
order to justify slavery. The negro and
the white We're not, they maintained,
the same kind Of creature. The great
difficulty of the one race theory Is to
account for such tremendous differences
as exist between a negro and a white
man, Chinaman and an Arab. Gil
mate and mode of life rather fail to do
It. Men do not have not at least within
the 1000 years Of history, changed any
under such influences. The negroes re-
main the same here that they were in
Africa. Englshmen are the same in
Australia or Canada. Every climate on
earth has tried itself on the Hebrew
and he is Hebrew from pole to pole.
The ancient colored Ortraits of Egypt
prove no change in color even in hun
lred generations.
The fundamental physiological differ
,nces which separate the Chinese from
ourselves are the color of the skin, the
structure of the hair, the conformation
# the skull the cephalic index for him |
II ~.
tic.
Finally, it doesn't seem to me that
nough is made of the fact that the Bi-
lie itself represents the eldest born of !
Adams sons, with all the virility and
persistence with which he was evident
Y overstocked as going away from all
is kind. passing out of Bible history
nd associations, exactly as the Chinese
ave done. This man Cain was an ag-
icuturist, which tn Chinese pre-emi-
emily and instinctively are and always
ave been. Of Gains line came also the
fetal workers which again this race,
neither in it's first historic home the
alleys of the Altai mountains, or when
lvaded in the Euphales valley by the
emmites, or overcome on the plains of
luld ny our own rate, always peCu- |
arly have been. At any rate, at least
600 years ago a people possessing these
gricultural and Woodworking charac- |
ristics of the Canutes, forced evident
before some stronger race, came
owly ''trekkng," "prairie-schooner-
g. down on to the vast river bottoms
China. No race to-day existing, no
zee which has passed away leaving a
story, ever found it's country unoccu-
ed when it arrived. The Chinese were
exception. There were savages in
nina when these Altaic emigrants ar
avd. How much these Asiatic Indi-
IS modified the newcomers is simply
hopeless conundrum. Not much, If
hn Chinaman knew himself then as
knows himself now and we think
did He has been conquered twice
ice himself and compelled his con-
error to swallow him as he was. root
d branch, body and soul, politics and
igion. 1t is not likely he did much Of
e swallowing when he was himself
,tor
n the thirteenth century those wide
GLANDS between China Siberia and
= Caspian Sea, the ancient homes Of
Huns and Turks, were occupied by
lumber of the pastoral tribes of their
atives. OF one of these Tartar or
,ngolian tribes, of no more signif-
ace than a goodsized American cat
ranch was born to the chief a son,
%. If judged by the magnitude of his
tiles and the extent of territory he