The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-04

which her great resources, hef vast population. the age and clvlllzatloh or her people entitle her.
 Just because the Gospel is China's first and primary need to-day IL IS la mentable that Christianity seems to De making so little progress thFonghout the eighteen provinces. Perhaps III the higher sense that mo power is lost that ever wrought for God, it is not wholly correct to say that efforts to introduce Christianity into China have failed. But humanely speaking, ln pfopofdoh to the amount of money, lives ana CT fort expended, they have apparently not met with great success.
 All over the empire to-day there pre- vails a spirit of hatred and antagonism to Christianity so intense and so pecu- liar that a certain brilliant missionary in describing it has had to coin new word He has called the feeling of the provincial authorities of Shantuns to- ward Christianity 'Christophobla Usually it is specially stipulated when 1 foreign teachers are engaged for re- gently organized government schools that they shall make no reference, even
 in the remotest way, to the Bible or 10 anything connected with it. In the i gradual subsiding of the Boxer storm
 the one kind of foreigners warned 10 keep away from troubled district are always missionaries. Except Ill me l few places where they are numerous enough to form a community by them i selves, Christian converts are ostra-
 cized, boycotted and sometimes perse-
 cuted. Tuan Fang the former govern
 or of Shensi, saved the lives of all the
 missionaries in his province. He IS re- garded by them as more favorable to missionaries than almost any other prominent official of the government.
 In a recent cony ersation with a friend,
 he said: I am glad hat l did not per-
 init murder I know much more or
 missionaries now than l did before the Boxer uprising, and l am convinced that the less heed we pay to heir each ing the better it will be for us. Confu-
 cius is peter for China than Christ
 "The chief obstacle to the spread of Christianity in China is, I believe,
 not any especial dislike of it as an
 imported religion, but a fear and an
 objection to certain foreign concom-
 tants which, because of a mistaken
 point of view, are regarded by mis-
 sionaries as essentials. Christophobia
 is due not only to Chinese hardness of
 heart, but also to the methods by
 which the message of Peace on earth
 and good will to men has been pre-
 scented to them.
 With the hackneyed objections tc
 missionaries I have nothing to do; they
 are as cruel and unjust as they are un' l truthful .. Of all the missionaries
 with whom I came in contact in the in terior, I did not find one who was no
 both brave and honorable, or wht would not willingly have given his lift
 in the cause of the Christianity 1T
 which he believed. The faults of mis
 sionaries are all of the head, not of thu heart
 | "The missionary tells the Chinese that they need the Gospel above ant beyond anything else but he supple ments this announcement with the idet hat Chinaman cannot be a Chrisiai unless his Christianity finds expression
 in exactly the same forms and obser vances that 1t would in the land iron which the missionary has emigrated
 The missionary does not stop with tn
 statement that the Cilinanian is q non
 believer in Christianity. He goes stel I further, and calls the Chinaman i 'heathen. From the lips of the fey n | English-speaking men who are leadint
 lives of denial and self-sacrifice in tn , interior of China, one must hear thi word frequently used in order to full g appreciate what heather is. Heath - en' is both a noun and an adjective - As a niun tt means an unconverte l Chinaman, of whom there are nor than three hundred millions. He is , child of the revil, on the road to perdi . tion. All of his ancestors whom he lla Q been taught to worshipa re now Twin h in a fiery lake. Everything that h
 may say or do or think is promptin of the evil one. He is the heir O countless generations of inherited sil n He is incapable of noble aspirations ( 6 of any real goodness.
 e Tn the adjective sense just about a V, of China outside of mission chapc d and schools Is heathen. All the Worlt a old literature of the empire, all Confl
 clan morality, all the beauty of tE ' temples, even the extreme honoring e parents by their children7-all al
 heathe and must receive unqualifie I condemnation. The conversion of si heather to Christianity means muC V more than it would in the case of a v, American. A Chinaman must not on l. experience a change of heart. he mu ,- also undergo complete revolution
 opinions and sentiments. He can 1t longer venerate his ancestors and pra ;e before their tablets that he may ket le unsulled the honored name they hay L. left him. It is not permitted to him e- take pdide in the traditional glorles 'f palaces and gray walled cities; he mu ir learn the history of his country ov in again; he must discover that all u n great sages and rulers of his country ,t past are eternally lost; he must exp y, rience a constant feeling of pity lt il h of contempt for the civilization al lg government of China and for | re friends and relatives who persist in r l. maining heather. In other words,
 order to become a Christian accordl' = to missionary standards 8 Chlnami
 must be denationalized. Ill sentime he must become 8 foreigner. And ma ,Hx,.KNl