sionaries sometimes differed with ministers or consuls as to whether they should go or stay. On the one hand it may be urged that missionaries are under strong obligations to attach great weight to the judgment of their minister or consul. If they receive the benefits and protection of citizenship, and if by their acts they may involve their governments, they should recognize the right of the authorized representatives of those governments to counsel them. The presumption should be in favour of obedience to that counsel, and it should not be disregarded without clear and strong reasons.

But the fact cannot be ignored that, whatever may be the personal sympathies of individual ministers or consuls, diplomacy as such considers only the secondary results of missions, and not the primary ones. Government officials, speaking on missionary work, almost invariably dwell on its material and civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such circumstances, we should expect diplomacy to be anxious and to look at the whole question from the prudential viewpoint.

But the missionary, like the soldier, must take some risks. From Paul down, missionaries have not hesitated to face them. Christ did not condition His great command upon the approval of Cæsar. It was not safe for Morrison to enter China, and for many years missionaries in the interior were in grave jeopardy. But devoted men and women accepted the risk in the past, and they will accept it in the future. They must exercise common sense. And yet this enterprise is unworldly as well as worldly, and when the soldier boldly faces every physical peril, when the trader unflinchingly jeopardizes life and limb in the pursuit

of gold-I found a German mining engineer and his wife living alone in a remote village soon after the Boxer excitementshould the missionary be held back?

If, however, after full and careful deliberation, missionaries feel that it is their duty to disregard the advice of their minister or consul, they should consult their respective boards and if the boards sustain them, all concerned should accept responsibility for the risks involved.

But if missionaries do not permit governments to control their movements, they should not be too exacting in their demands on them when trouble comes. The Rev. Dr. Henry M. Field once said :

"A foreign missionary is one who goes to a strange country to preach the gospel of our salvation. That is his errand and his defense. The civil authorities are not presumed to be on his side. If he offends the sensibilities of the people to whom he preaches, he is supposed to face the consequences. If he cannot win men by the Word and his own love for their souls, he cannot call on the civil or military powers to convert them. Nor is the missionary a merchant, in the sense that he must have ready recourse to the courts for a recouping of losses or the recovery of damages. Commercial treaties cannot cover all our missionary enterprises. Confusion of ideas here has confounded a good many fine plans and zealous men. It is a tremendous begging of the whole question to insist on the nation's protection of the men who are to subvert the national faith. Property rights and preaching rights get closely entwined, and it is difficult to untangle them at times, but the distinction is definite and the difference often fundamental. By confusing them we weaken the claims of both. And when our Christian preachers get behind a mere property right in order to defend their right to preach a new religion, they dishonour themselves and defame the faith they profess. To get behind diplomatic guaranties in order to evangelize the nations is to mistake the sword for the Spirit, to rely on the arm of flesh and put aside the help of the Almighty."

That is, in my judgment, stating the case rather strongly. Doubtless Dr. Field did not mean that governments would be justified in discriminating against missionaries and he would

probably have been one of the first to protest if they had done So. He was addressing missionaries, reminding them that they could do in liberty what the governments could not do in law, and exhorting against any disposition to depend unduly upon the sword of the secular arm. At any rate, he was a devoted friend of missions and as such his words are deserving of thoughtful consideration.

XXI

RESPONSIBILITY OF MISSIONARIES FOR THE
BOXER UPRISING

C

RITICS vociferously assert that the missionaries were chiefly responsible for the Boxer uprising and for most

of the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners. As to the general accuracy of this charge, the reader has doubtless formed some impression from what has been said in the preceding chapters regarding the objects and methods of foreign trade and foreign politics. Still, it is but fair to remember that there are 3,854 missionaries in China, representing almost every European and American nationality and no less than nine Roman Catholic and sixty-seven Protestant boards.' As might be expected, the standard of appointment varies. A few boards, while insisting upon high spiritual qualifications, do not insist upon equal qualifications of some other kinds, while in all societies an occasional missionary proves to be visionary and ill-balanced. But in the great majority of the boards, the standard of appointment is very high, and while occasional mistakes are made, yet as a rule the missionaries represent the best type of Protestant Christianity. They are, as a class, men and women of education, refinement and ability—in every respect the equals and as a rule the superiors of the best class of non-missionary Europeans and Americans in China.

Now it is manifest that criticisms which may be true of some missionaries may not be true of the missionary body as a whole. As a matter of fact, the average critic has in mind either the Roman Catholic priests or the members of some independent society. This is notably true of Michie. Many of the charges are not true even of them, but of the charges 1 The Chinese Recorder.

that I have seen that have any foundation at all, nine-tenths do not apply to the missionaries of church boards. It is always fair, therefore, to ask a critic, "To which class of missionaries do you refer ?"

The clearest line of distinction is between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. The latter number 904. They have been in China the longest. They have the largest following,' and their methods are radically different from those of the Protestant missionaries. It is not denied that some of the priests are high-minded, intelligent men and that some of the Protestants lack wisdom. But comparing the two classes broadly, no one who is at all conversant with the facts will regard the Protestants as inferior. I do not wish to be unjust to the Roman Catholic missionaries in China. Many good things might be said regarding the work which some of them are doing. I personally called at several Roman Catholic stations in various parts of the Empire and I have vivid recollections of the kindness with which I was received, while more than once I was impressed by the unmistakable evidences of devotion and self-sacrifice. It was pleasant to hear many Protestant missionaries declare that they had never heard a suspicion as to the moral character of the priests. I did not hear any in all north China. The lives of the Roman Catholic missionaries are hard and narrow and they have no relief in the companionships of wife and children, in furloughs or in medical attendance, for they have no medical missionaries, while not infrequently the priest lives alone in a village. Dead to the world, with no families and no expectation of returning to their native land, trained from boyhood to a monastic life, drilled to unquestioning obedience and to few personal needs, their ambition is not to get anything for themselves but to strengthen the Church for which the individual priest unhesitatingly sacrifices himself, content if by his complete submergence of his own interests he has helped to make her great. With such men, Rome is a mighty power in Asia. But the sincere, devoted man may be

1720,540 Roman Catholics-compare p. 223 for Protestants.