Newspaper Page Text
VOL. III. RICHMOND,
The Power b
There has grown up a new na- A
tional spirit unknown to the Chinese
a generation ago. Within the I
latter nnrt. nf the nineteenth een
tury China has suffered shamefully
at the hands of the great powers. BY
France took Siani; England scooped
out Hong Kong; Japan demanded Formosa
aud Port Arthur, and Germany Kweichow; and
Russia encroached upon Manchuria. Only recently
Japan has absorbed Korea. While all this
was going on China was like a man under an
anaesthetic, seemingly not knowing or feeling
her deep humiliation, but recently such encroachments
on Chinese rights have been bitterly resented.
Look for an instance at the boycott of
American goods, which though it has passed
away, so far as ill feelings engendered are concerned,
is yet costing our Southern States $27,000,000
each year. Among the Chinese the cry
now is "China for Chinese." And every imagined
or actual trespassing upon Chinese rights is
being strenuously opposed. A new patriotism
has possessed the minds of the people and no man
can tell wliereunto it will grow. The people are
demanding a constitutional government and
before the year 1920 undoubtedly
China will either have a parliament or
a revolution. What was a few years
ago unthinkable has now actually taken
place.
Now what has brought about these
great and stupendous changes? There K
are four possible causes, diplomacy, commerce
and mission and war work. Di- A
plomacy has contributed something to A
the rehabilitation of China, though Y
largely as a counter irritant, uommerce
has had an influence sometimes for good
and sometimes for evil, but in either
case not much beyond the treaty ports. g
Foreign wars indeed have shaken China q
but only latterly and after other forces
had been at work. It is not primarily
diplomacy, commerce or war that has
shaken the oldest empire in the world g
to its depths, but the progress and power g(
of ideas. It is ideas and ideals that have
drawn the Chinese people from their
old apathy, indifference and prejudice and
that have pointed the way to the larger
things. And undoubtedly the great agency
for the promulgation of ideas has been
?>X missionary work. The first appeal to pac?i
i\ i triotisra was by the missionaries. The first liter??J3
- U l! XL- 1?1 -i
mule ?iiu iui a mug ume me omy literature
"^^^^concerning the outside world wa3 published by
missionary societies. Indeed, the modern art of
V' printing in China was invented by Mr. Gamble,
a Presbyterian missionary. Dr. Y. J. Allen, a
' ' Southern Methodist Missionary, edited the first
and for twenty years the most influential magazine
in China. Dr. Arthur Smith said of this,
55S:>
: ^ ^
I?gf
? ?
, NEW ORLEANS, ATLANTA, NOVEME
Lnd Progress o
nong The Chin
KtV. f. t . PRICE, L
that it was, '' the largest single window, through
which the Chinese have ever looked upon the
world.'" Modern schools were first established
and maintained by missionary societies,
thus missionary education, and the first
Chinese Imperial University was for forty
years presided over by J)r. "W. A. 1*.
Martin, an American missionary. When
the Chinese established schools of their
own they drew upon mission schools for
their teachers, and first took mission schools
as their models. The institution, which is
to-day furnishing 75 per cent, of all the lit
tuuiure usea in me scnoois, is tfte Commercial
Press in Shanghai, an off-shoot of the Presbyterian
Mission Press, and conducted by Chinese
Christian men. The find: popular voting ever
done in China was by Chinese Christians in the
churches when voting for their own church oflfiChe
lUngbom of Cfie JWeefe
BY PRISCILLA LEONARD.
ings choose their soldiers from the strong and soui
And hurl them forth to battle at command,
cross the centuries, o'er sea and land,
ge after age, the shouts of war resound;
et, at the end, the whole wide world around,
Each empty empire, once so proudly planned,
Melts til mil trVl Timo'a finrnipo lilrn +! ?<% -1
IJAU H1U Ul Sflliu
ut once a King?despised, forsaken, crowned
nly with thorns?chose in the face of loss
Earth's poor, her weak, her outcast, gave them love,
And sent them forth to conquer in His name
The world that crucified Him, and proclaim
is empire. Lo ! pride's vanished thrones above
ehold the enduring banner of the Cross!?The Outloo1
cers.
The first serious attempt to deal with suffering
and disease among the Chinese people was by
Christian missionary physicians. And the MediA
- t* m 1 1
xvHsucinnun 01 v^nina is pernaps tne largest
organized charity in the whole world. One million
patients are being treated each year in Missionary
hospitals, and this wide-spread philanthropy
is influencing the minds of the Chinese
and is stirring them, as nothing else of the
kind has done, to attempt like work on their own
account.
In the realm of ideas there has been a change
of climate in China and it has been brought about
BM&M
VES TERN PRE SB YTEP/Afih
AL PRESBYTER/AfV ?
nc/r/v rtxc.z>B y itjy/AN
iER 29, 1911. NO. 48.
if Christianity
directly and indirectly by the prosecution
of missionary worn. It is
the leaven of which our Master
spoke and it is beginning to leaven
~ the whole lump.
) # ?) . Again will you notice certain
great moral reforms directly traceable
to the leaven of Christianity
Take the anti-opium movement. A few years
aero oninm hurl miiimnn ?i??
? _x <jjl siavcs ixi iniiu, ana
it touched with its blighting effect a population
equal to twice that of the United States. It
was an awful curse and things seemed to be going
from bad to worse without any hope of remedy.
Only five years ago a prominent writer
said that no legislation or measure of repression
could within a century draw the Chinese away
from the opium habit. But heathen China has
undertaken the reform of this stupendous evil.
And though the work has been goingonforonly
four years, retail opium shops have been closed,
opium users are being registered and taxed, and
the cultivation of opium is being gradually re^i.
1 mi
si* juieu. me prospect is that by the year 1917,
the time set by the Chinese government, the
opium evil will be effectually stamped out. Now
how did this stupendous reform come
about? The government, it is true, expressed
its will in an edict, but the government
could have never turned a
wheel in bringing about such a reform,
had it not been for the response on the
id, Part of the Chinese people. "What was it
that created the popular opinion that
brought about so great a change? It
was in one way or another the missionaries
and the mission work. The
churches from the first refused to admit
opium smokers as church members. This
first made the Chinese sit up and take
notice, and put them to the blush as regarded
certain leaders of th enative religions.
Then there was formed the
Anti-Opium Society. For years this society
led a forlorn hope, but backed up
by men of faith and vision, it gradually
t gained ground until anti-opium societies
began to be formed, not only among mis~
sionaries, but among the Chinese themselves.
In the year 1906 Dr. H. C. DuBose, of
South Carolina, president of the National AntiOpium
Society, paid a visit to Viceroy Chang
Chih Tung, one of the great men of China. The
Viceroy received the missionary with every mark
of courtesy. And in an inner guest room these
two, the one a representative of a powerful
heathen government, the other a representative
of the forces of Christianity, sat and talked together
about the one thing they had in common,
the overthrow of opium. Finally Viceroy
Chang said to Dr. DuBose: "If you, sir, will
prepare a petition I will present it to the Emperor
of China." After the interview was over
'''