The age-herald., 1900-07-09
A CAUSTIC REPLY TO CONSUL CHOW Mir. Williams Talks of the Work
 of Missionaries. THEY ARE NOT TO BLAME Statement of Consul Chow That Mis- sionaries Are Responsible for the
 Present Trouble in China
 is Strenuously Denied
THEY ARE NOT TO BLAME

several years a missionary In Cn1na, IS very indignant over the recent statement of Consul Chow to the effect that mission aries are responsible for all the present trouble in his native country. MT. Will Hams, after carefully reading the printed interview with Mr. Chow, makes the fol- lowing reply:
 MT. Chow Tschi, the Chinese consul at New York has silenced all speculation as to the cause of the Boxer movement in the Middle Kingdom. He speaks eX ca- thedra, and has the sound of infallibility in his voice. 'Professing native Christians he says, have been the cause of all the disturbances and outcries against foreign CTS and foreign innovations in China. And they are bad lot, too he adds with pa trotic warmth. Out of an aggregate of 6,OO0,000 he thinks that it would be genu- inc surprise to tell off sixty really good ones.
 MT. Chow's opinion of the missionary the man whose business it is to be a fisher of (Chinese) men'-is-yes, it is rather fa- vorable. (That worthy across the watery way has been listening for MT Chow's opinion of him these years while going a-fishing0 The missionary is a good man. he means well he doubtless does some good, but and now but big ocean liner falls from MT. Chow's lips, glows in MT. Chows eyes and accentuates itself in the skyward line of MT. Chows felt-bottomed shoes.
 "'The man with the fishers net who has been so busily engaged in getting to the surface what he has hitherto thought was good, eatabe fish, is not feeling near so good now as when MT. Chow had only got out a part of what he had to say. He has learned from this distinguished consul and world-enlightener that what he supposed was shad and such like among the pisca- torial elite was, after all, only the rakings and scrapings of the neither floor of Ocean dom, That fisherman feels as if he can never cast net again. He had thought he had two good eyes in his head, and that he could see quite as we'll as-well, as well as a New York Chinese consul. But-not so. There must be something in the eye of nation MT. Chow represents 100000 GOO people, and must be able to see that a fish is better than one poor lone man who represents nobody but himself The inn pression grows apace, because other con- suls of other nations are said-some of them-to have had their vision enlarged the same way. He had thought that expe- rience in fishing would court for some thing. Experience ordinarily does count in other things, but somehow fishing must be one of those exceptions which are said to prove a rule
 'rThe new light from this celestial lumi- nary dazes him. His life work has been a mistake. He has played the fool on an elevated platform. What fools we mortals be- anyhow, is his bitter thought. But Of all fools the missionary fool is the biggest fool There is a bit of consolation to him, however, in the thought that he has been backed by the most respectable appearing lot of fools in all the world. Men of sup posed learning and character and goodness have organized themselves and put all that they have and all that they are into the fool project of sending him to China to drag the bottom of the sea and bring up the wriggling, squirming monstrosities of the ocean bed. He and they have united in praises over an uplifted humanity as the net has come up with it's nondescript mass Bahl why couldn't he and his de- luded packers in this toilful scheme have been wise like MT. Chow and let the ocean bed alone? What's the use of going a fish, ing anyway? The fish are content. Let them remain so. Here he has been stirring the muddy depths of the Chinese sea. and the sand has got into the eyes of the re- spectable fish like MT. Chow, and the ees are all mixed up with the upper tendon of the deep, and Mrs. Mud-fish has dared venture into Mrs. Trout's parlor. The good tbo Daop1p he ing people in China are in the ascendancy. Their way is the best way for them, and per consequence, the best way for all the rest of the world. They should not be dis turbed.
 MT. Chow is right. The fact is he did not go far enough. Not only the native Christian but the foreign missionary is sponsible for this upheaval. Further still, Christ himself is responsible for 1t; for did He not say, T came to send-not peace on the earth-but a sword His radicalism ex- cites friction and arrays men against each other. Why did He inaugurate such a plan? Why did He send His disciples tramping over the earth creating trouble wherever they went? To come to matters of detail among peoples why didn't He leave the British Jour ancestors alone, and leave the Druids to worship under the sa- cred oak and burn hundreds of sacrificial victims as a religious holocaust? It was their way, and we, their descendants, wouldn't have known any better and would have been as we'll satisfied with the then existing order as with the present Whats the use of all this stir about civilization any way? The chick in the shell is content with his shell until he takes the fool mo- ton of getting out and getting into some- bodys frying pan.
 MT. Chow evidently has this mission ary badly rattled. In fact he has just about spoiled one missionary for some mis- sionary board.
 "But for fear that MT. Chow may im- agine himself more Titunic than his pro- portions would justify, would like to ask him by what sort of ethical gymnastics he can call men good and then declare that they pay monthly wages to natives to se-