American liquor which is debauching the Africans, the opium which is enervating the Chinese, 6,000 tons a year coming from India at a profit of $32,000,000 to the English Government.1 How can such a civilization prepare the way for Christianity? As a matter of fact, the Chinese already have a civilization, and if our civilization is considered apart from its distinctively Christian elements, it is not so much superior to the Chinese as we are apt to imagine. The differences are chiefly matters of taste and education. The truth is that always and everywhere, "civilization, so far from obliterating iniquity, imports into the world iniquities of its own. It changes to some degree the aspects of iniquity, but does not make them less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert patron and champion. The sin that is the devil's chief stock in trade is not what is going on in Hester Street, but on the polite avenues. Evangelization conducts to civilization, but civilization has no necessary bearing on evangelization; that is to say, there is in civilization no energy inherently calculated to yield gospel facts. By carrying schools and arts, trade and manufacture, among people that are now savages you may be able to refine the quality of their deviltry, but that is not even the first step towards making angels, or even saints of them." s ... Lowell is said to have administered the following stinging rebuke to the skeptical critics who sneered about missionaries and declared the adequacy of civilization without them : "When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, manhood respected, womanhood honoured, and human life held in due regard; when skeptics can find such 1 The Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, Sermon. a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views." But we may add Darwin's conjecture that "should a voyager chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far." Bishop Thoburn says that no nation without Christianity has ever advanced a step, and that while in Washington there are 6,000 models of plows invented by Americans, India is using the same plow as in the days of David and Solomon. But wherever Christ's gospel goes, true civilization appears. "A better soul will soon make better circumstances; but better circumstances will not necessarily make a better soul."' "We must be here to work, And men who work can only work for men, And raise men's bodies still by raising souls." 1 The Rev. Dr. James H. Snowden. T XI THE BUILDING OF RAILWAYS1 HE extension of trade has naturally been accompanied not only by the increase of foreign steamship lines to the numerous port cities of China, but by the development of almost innumerable coastwise and river vessels. Many of these are owned and operated by the Chinese themselves, but as steamers came with the foreigners and as they drive out the native junks and bring beggary to their owners, the masses of the Chinese cannot be expected to feel kindly towards such competition, however desirable the steamer may appear to be from the view-point of a more disinterested observer. But this interference with native customs has been far less revolutionary than that of the railways. The pressure of foreign commerce upon China has naturally resulted in demands for concessions to build railways, in order that the country might be opened up for traffic and the products of the interior be more easily and quickly brought to the coast. The first railroad in China was built by British promoters in 1876. It ran from Shanghai to Wu-sung, only fourteen miles. Great was the excitement of the populace, and no sooner was it completed than the Government bought it, tore up the roadbed, and dumped the engines into the river. That ended railway-building till 1881, when, largely through the influence of Wu Ting-fang, late Chinese Minister to the United States, the Chinese themselves, under the guidance of an English engineer, built a little line from the Kai-ping coal mines to Taku, at the mouth of the Pei-ho River and the ocean gate 1 Part of this chapter appeared as an article in the American Monthly Review of Reviews, February, 1904. |