oT^oToi 
 
THE 
 
 Missionary Crisis 
 
 -IN- 
 
 CHINA 
 
 By REV. S. H. CHESTER, D.D. 
 
 
 Nashville, Tennessee 
 
 PRESS OF MARSHALL & BRUCE COMPANY 
 1901 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS 
 IN CHINA. 
 
 By REV. S. H. CHESTER, D.D. 
 
 There are several things concerning 
 China about which the minds of students 
 of present day problems have been agi- 
 tated which may now be regarded as 
 closed questions. The first of these is 
 the question of China as a military 
 power. At the beginning of the recent 
 troubles the periodicals of the country 
 were full of alarming statements by those 
 who might have been supposed to know 
 whereof they spoke, as to the millions of 
 soldiers that China had been drilling in 
 modem methods since her war with Ja- 
 pan, and the unlimited supply of modern 
 arms, manufactured or imported, with 
 which her arsenals were stored. Many 
 were led to believe that she would not 
 only be able to oppose an effective re- 
 sistance to any foreign invasion, but that 
 she was in danger of becoming a foreign 
 
 Note — Address delivered before the Missionary 
 Society of Louisville Seminary. 
 
4 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 invader herself, and that the “Yellow 
 Peril” was something which the nations 
 of the West had good cause to fear. 
 
 While reading these statements I re- 
 called an interview which I had, in 1897, 
 with Gen. Jones, former Confederate 
 brigadier, then our United States Consul 
 at Chinkiang. He told me of a visit 
 which he had recently paid to Li Hung 
 Chang, at Tientsin. He said that after 
 a gorgeous feast with which he was re- 
 galed he was asked by Li Hung Chang 
 to go out and review a body of about 
 twenty thousand troops, which Li Hung 
 Chang was endeavoring to have trained 
 and put upon a modern military basis. 
 When the troops had been put through 
 their maneuvers, his host turned to him 
 and said: “What do you think of my 
 army?” Gen. Jones replied: “I suppose 
 you wish me to tell you the truth?” 
 “Yes,” said Li Hung Chang, “let me 
 have your honest opinion.” “Well,” said 
 Gen. Jones, “vour army is not worth 
 
 , anything at all.” Li Hung 
 
 Chang replied, “Well, I know that is 
 true, but it is the best I can do with the 
 material now at my disposal.” This was 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 5 
 
 the body of troops with which the allied 
 forces first came into collision at Tien- 
 tsin. It seemed for a time as if they 
 might be going to make an effectual 
 resistance. They were able to over- 
 whelm Admiral Seymour’s little band of 
 y.8oo marines, and prevent its progress 
 towards Pekin. But just so soon as 
 there was anything that could be called 
 an army representing the Western 
 powers on the field this body of troops, 
 and all the imperial forces, together with 
 the bands of Boxers in the vicinity, 
 seemed to vanish from the scene, and 
 the allied troops marched into Pekin 
 practically without opposition. It is evi- 
 dent, therefore, that whatever settlement 
 is made between the Western powers 
 and China will be one into which the 
 question of China as a military power 
 does not enter. The people of China 
 furnish as fine raw material for soldiers 
 as those of any other nation, but the 
 conditions will have to be greatly 
 changed before their military capacities 
 can be utilized. 
 
 Another closed question, it seems to 
 me, is the much talked of partition of 
 
6 
 
 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 China. Russia desires to dominate, and 
 possibly own, Manchuria, in order to 
 protect her Trans-Siberian Railway and 
 trade which traverses that province. She 
 will take possession of it whenever the 
 other Western powers consent, but she 
 is not ready to go to war, either with 
 Japan or England, for that purpose. 
 Every Western power having trade in- 
 terests in the far East needs somewhere 
 in that part of the world a naval base 
 for the rendezvous and coaling of its 
 ships. These they already have. Ad- 
 miral Dewey selected ours for us at Ma- 
 nila. England has hers at Hong-Kong 
 and Wei-Hei-Wei; Germany, at Kaiou- 
 chow; Russia, at Port Arthur, and 
 Erance, at Tonquin. For them the pos- 
 session of any of China’s territory 
 beyond these naval bases would simply 
 be a burden without any compensating 
 advantages. What they all want is the 
 “open door” for trade. This “open door” 
 they want for the whole of China, and 
 not for a small part of it, as would be the 
 case if the Chines Empire were disin- 
 tegrated and partitioned among them. 
 
 The open door means freedom of in- 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 7 
 
 gress and egress, and security for the life 
 and property of those who are engaged 
 in exploiting the material resources of 
 the country. It means, therefore, at the 
 same time the “open door” for the gos- 
 pel. This is what the church of Christ 
 asks in regard to China. It asks no 
 aid of consuls and gunboats for the pur- 
 pose of forcing the Christian religion 
 upon an unwilling people. It only asks 
 the same protection that is accorded the 
 diplomat and the trader for its represen- 
 tatives while they go and tell those who 
 are willing to hear it the story of the 
 gospel. And this is manifestly what 
 Providence has had in view in permit- 
 ting all the terrible things that have re- 
 cently come to pass in China. While 
 making the wrath of man to praise Him, 
 and restraining the remainder thereof, 
 He has been answering the prayer of His 
 people for a hundred years for the priv- 
 ilege of preaching the gospel in China. 
 And now in this providential answering 
 of its prayer the church stands con- 
 fronted with what is perhaps its greatest 
 opportunity and its greatest responsibil- 
 
8 
 
 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 ity since the era of modern missions be- 
 gan. 
 
 I. The evangelization of China is im- 
 mensely important for the world’s sake, 
 and for its own sake as a member of the 
 family of nations. Sir Robert Hart, who 
 knows China in a political way better 
 than any other living man, expresses 
 the opinion that the only two possible 
 things to prevent China’s becoming a 
 curse to herself and a menace to man- 
 kind are its partition, which he thinks is 
 impossible without a devastating Euro- 
 pean war as one result of it, or its Chris- 
 tianization, which he rightly thinks is 
 hopeless without a vastly greater expen- 
 diture of energy and means than are now 
 being employed in that work. After ages 
 of successful effort to defy the law of 
 change and maintain the status quo of the 
 times of Abraham and the Pharaoh’s, 
 the time has come at last for the civili- 
 zation of the West to suplpant the old, 
 effete, and dying civilization of China. 
 The present Emperor, and many of the 
 greatest men in China, are in favor of 
 this change. Their effort to introduce it 
 was temporarily defeated by the repre- 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 9 
 
 sentatives of the old order, but the meth- 
 ods of those who defeated them brought 
 them into collision with the powers of 
 the West, by whom they were in turn 
 defeated, and now it is as certain as any- 
 thing human can be that the old order 
 must change and give place to the new. 
 In another quarter of a century China, 
 supplied with railroads, schools, facto- 
 ries, trained Armies, and a revolutionized 
 government, will be hurrying after Ja- 
 pan on the paths of modern progress. 
 
 There are those who say, “If this be so, 
 why not let the evangelization of China 
 wait until civilization has gone ahead 
 and prepared the way for it?” A little 
 mental philosophy and a little history 
 are all one needs to know to answer that 
 suggestion. The mental philosophy of 
 the case is that the human mind, like 
 nature, abhors a vacuum. No doubt our 
 Western education will soon expel from 
 the minds of the Chinese the nature su- 
 perstitions which are the basis of their 
 present religions, and the scream of the 
 railroad whistle will frighten away many 
 of the demons of earth and air that have 
 terrorized them. As soon as this is done 
 
10 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 the place which these things have occu- 
 pied in their minds will be taken up by 
 something else. And if the true religion 
 is not there to take the place of them, 
 that which will do< so will be educated 
 materialism and atheism. The history 
 of the case is that this is what has oc- 
 curred to a large degree in India and 
 Japan. And we have learned in these 
 countries that educated atheism is a 
 much more difficult foe for Christian 
 missions to deal with than uneducated 
 Buddhism and Brahmanism. Moreover, 
 we may well remember that our civiliza- 
 tion, Christian though we call it, is not 
 altogether so. It has its vices as well 
 as its virtues, and the things which the 
 heathen have affinity for and first lay 
 hold on when they come into> contact 
 with it, as rerpesented by the trader and 
 soldier, are its vices rather than its vir- 
 tues. And so, whether our Wetsern civ- 
 ilization in the long run, will do China 
 more harm than good, depends on 
 whether we shall succeed in giving her 
 along with it our Christian religion, 
 which is the basis of all that is good in 
 our civilization, and the only thing that 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 11 
 
 can make any nation truly civilized and 
 great. 
 
 II. But the chief importance of evan- 
 gelizing China arises out of certain facts 
 in regard to her position, and certain 
 characteristics of her people, which 
 would make a converted China the great- 
 est of all instruments for the evangeli- 
 zation of the rest of the Eastern world. 
 
 i. In respect of natural resources, ex- 
 cepting the United States of America, 
 China is the greatest country in the 
 world. Lying in the north temperate 
 zone, where all the strong races of the 
 earth are found, the church in China will 
 possess more native energy and vigor 
 than those established among the ener- 
 vated people of the tropics. Its deposits 
 of coal, iron, and all the precious metals, 
 as yet untouched and undeveloped, are 
 ample for the needs of the civilization 
 that is to be. In the north and in the 
 south much of the soil is poor and dry, and 
 for the people of these sections life will, 
 perhaps, always be as it is now, simply a 
 struggle for existence. But in Central 
 China, between the Yangtse and Hoang 
 
12 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 rivers, lies the great plain, averaging 
 from 150 to 200 miles in breadth, and 
 running back several hundred miles in 
 the interior. This is the largest and 
 most fertile body of valley land to be 
 found in one body anywhere in the 
 world. The method of cultivation em- 
 ployed is very primitive but very effect- 
 ive. The old wooden plow that is still 
 in use to stir the surface is a fac simile 
 of the one that Noah made the day after 
 he came out of the ark. The sub-soil is 
 dug deep with the same old pick, of 
 which pictures are found on the most 
 ancient Egyptian monuments. The 
 clods are carefully pulverized by the fin- 
 gers of the people. Every evening at 
 sunset during the crop season the fields 
 are full of women and children, each with 
 a gourd of liuid fertilizer and a small 
 gourd with which they apply it to each 
 separate and individual plant. In this 
 way the quality of the soil has not only 
 been preserved unimpaired, but has been 
 improved from age to age, until it has 
 now reached an almost incredible degree 
 of fertility. And so, although that re- 
 gion is perhaps more densely populated 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 13 
 
 than any other part of the earth’s sur- 
 face, the farming people of the Yangtse 
 Valley are able to get for themselves 
 and their families three square meals a 
 day, of rice and beans and vegetables, 
 seasoned with fish from the canals, and 
 to which are added roast pig or duck, 
 and sundry sweet meats on feast days. 
 They are a well-fed and well-to-do peo- 
 ple as compared with the peasantry of 
 some of the older countries in Europe. 
 The church established in this part of 
 China will have no need to be a pension- 
 er on the bounty of Christendom. It 
 will not only be able to be self-support- 
 ing and self-propagating, but will pos- 
 sess material resources enough to make 
 it able to be an aggressive power for the 
 evangelization of the rest of the Eastern 
 world. 
 
 2. Next to the white Caucasian race, 
 who are always and everywhere God’s 
 kings of men, the opinion of those who 
 know them best is that the Chinese are, 
 in respect to their capacities, the great- 
 est people in the world. Physically, they 
 are far superior to any other people of 
 the Orient. The Canton coolie, whom 
 
14 
 
 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 we know in this country as our laundry- 
 man, is far from being a representative 
 specimen of his race. Many of these we 
 see in the Yangtse Valley are six feet 
 tall, strong and stalwart in their devel- 
 opment, and possesses unequaled capaci- 
 ties of physical endurance. 
 
 The Chinaman, as we know him to- 
 day, possesses some very unlovely traits 
 of character. One does not know 
 whether to be more offended or amused 
 at his monumental and preposterous 
 conceit. He is devoid of sentiment, cold, 
 materialistic, and utilitarian in his view 
 of life. When his passions are aroused 
 he has a tiger-like ferocity and cruelty. 
 In ordinary conversation he will tell you 
 the truth only when he thinks he will 
 deceive you by so doing. Some one 
 asked a Chinese scholar for his estimate 
 as to how many Chinamen out of every 
 hundred would lie. His answer was, 
 “one hundred and one.” They were 
 thought to hold the world’s record in 
 that line until, during the late troubles, 
 the representatives of the Western As- 
 sociated Press, at Shanghai, achieved a 
 reputation for mendacity which, perhaps, 
 
THE MIS SION AH Y CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 15 
 
 may require a revision of the world’s 
 judgment on the matter. 
 
 It has been shown, however, that 
 some of these traits are not innate and 
 ineradicable, but are a product of their 
 environment, which may be changed 
 when the environment is changed. Lie- 
 ing, for instance, is characteristic of al- 
 most all the people who live under des- 
 potic governments, being the natural ref- 
 uge of the weak from the oppression of 
 the strong. The Chinaman possesses, 
 naturally, some fine traits, which furnish 
 a basis upon which, under the regener- 
 ating and sanctifying power of the gos- 
 pel, a noble character may be built. His 
 intellectual capacity may be gauged by 
 the fact that for ages it is he who has 
 given his civilization, literature, philos- 
 ophy, and religion to the people of all 
 the surrounding nations. He is sober- 
 minded, industrious, inclined to be 
 peaceable, and has an invincible respect 
 for authority and law. The world fur- 
 nishes no parallel to his patience and per- 
 severance in carrying out any enterprise 
 which he undertakes. In 1873 Gen. 
 Tsotsung Chang was commissioned to 
 
16 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 proceed from Pekin to the far South to 
 suppress an army'of brigands and pirates 
 who were ravaging that section. It took 
 him about three years to accomplish the 
 journey with his army. Several times it 
 was found necessary to turn his army 
 into an agricultural colony and to plant 
 and raise crops for its necessary supplies. 
 The obstacles in his way were deemed 
 by many to be insuperable, but he never 
 once hesitated or halted in his efforts 
 until at the end of nine years he was able 
 to report to the emperor that his mission 
 was thoroughly accomplished. When a 
 Chinese student sets out to gain a liter- 
 ary degree as his qualification for public 
 office, he makes a lifetime business of 
 it until he succeeds. In 1899 ^ ie g° v “ 
 ernor of one province reported at the 
 competitive examination nine candidates 
 over eighty years of age, and two over 
 ninety. The governor of another prov- 
 ince reported thirteen candidates over 
 eighty, and one over ninety. A third 
 governor reported thirty-five candidates 
 over eighty, and eighteen over ninety. 
 Unfetter such people from the bonds of 
 ignorant superstition and give them the 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 17 
 
 problems of real science and truth to 
 work at, and it staggers us to think what 
 results in the way of scholarship would 
 be achieved. Make such a people Chris- 
 tian, and they will make Christian 
 thought dominant in the far East, as 
 they have done heretofore with their 
 Confucianism in their ancestral worship. 
 
 Another distinguishing characteristic 
 of the Chinese among the Eastern peo- 
 ples is what we may call their Calvinistic 
 temperament. “The decrees of heaven” 
 and “the will of heaven” are among the 
 most frequent phrases in their literature 
 and in their speech. As the word “heav- 
 en” now represents to them a blind, in- 
 visible power, or a host of malignant 
 spirits, the result is that they are a na- 
 tion of fatalists and pessimists. But if 
 what they understand by heaven were 
 supplanted by what the Bible reveals of 
 the true God and our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, their natural transforma- 
 tion would be into a nation of Pauline 
 optimists and predestinarians. When we 
 remember the part played in Christian 
 history in the West by those holding this 
 form of the faith, what may we not ex- 
 
18 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 pect to be done in the East by the great 
 and populous nation of China, Christian- 
 ized and possessing the natural charac- 
 teristics which insure that her Christian- 
 ity will possess the same robust, sturdy 
 and aggressive traits as that of the fol- 
 lowers of Augustine, Calvin, and Knox? 
 
 Perhaps the greatest of the China- 
 man’s qualities is his well-known relia- 
 bility in all matters which he recognizes 
 as involving a responsibility or a trust. 
 This quality seems inconsistent with 
 some of the other qualities I have men- 
 tioned. But it is a fact abundantly prov- 
 en by the best of evidence that he pos- 
 sesses it in a remarkable degree. A gen- 
 tleman who spent twenty-five years in 
 the Chinese silk trade recently testified 
 through one of our periodicals that in 
 ordering his goods from a Chinese mer- 
 chant he found it unnecessary to employ 
 any middleman at all. He had only to 
 order his goods by correspondence, and 
 he always found them on delivery to cor- 
 respond exactly with the quality as rep- 
 resented by the Chinese merchant. In 
 the foreign business houses in the coast 
 cities of Japan, as well as those of China, 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 19 
 
 you will find that the employees in po- 
 sitions of trust are usually Chinese, and 
 we are told that the betrayal of a trust 
 by one of these employees is almost an 
 unheardof occurrence. This quality 
 grows, as I believe, partly out of their 
 Calvinistic temperament, and partly out 
 of their industrial system through the 
 influence of heredity. Every trade and 
 profession has its guild, and no one can 
 pursue any calling or business without 
 being a member of the guild which rep- 
 resents it. Even a street beggar must 
 belong to the “beggars’ guild,” and in 
 order to steal with impunity one must 
 belong to the “thieves’ guild.” The 
 guild holds its members responsible for 
 its business reputation. If a member of 
 any guild brings discredit on the organi- 
 zation by betraying his trust and thereby 
 injures the guild’s business, he is always 
 severely disciplined, sometimes to the 
 extent of being knocked on the head and 
 thrown into a canal. And so> at first 
 through fear of the consequences, and 
 finally through the influence of heredity, 
 it has become a part of the Chinaman’s 
 nature to feel that he must be faithful 
 
20 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 to a trust. This guild feature enters into 
 their idea of the Christian church, and 
 perhaps there is no other church in 
 Christendom in which the sense of the 
 responsibility of church membership is 
 so strongly developed as it is among the 
 one hundred thousand members of the 
 various Protestant churches in China. 
 During the last twelve months their 
 fidelity to that responsibility has been 
 put to its final and supreme test. And 
 how have they stood the test? Even the 
 secular papers have borne witness of the 
 heroic fortitude with which they have 
 endured persecutions as savage as those 
 which the early Christians suffered at 
 the hands of Nero- and Caligula. The 
 outrages of the Boxers did not extend to 
 the territory occupied by our Southern 
 Presbyterian missions, but the fear of 
 these outrages was constantly before 
 them, and the ordinary persecutions to 
 which they are always subjected were 
 much intensified. Our missionaries tell 
 us that, so far as they know, under these 
 persecutions not a single communing 
 member of their churches denied the 
 faith. In the provinces of Chili and 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 21 
 
 Shantung the native Christians stood up 
 by the thousands to be tempted and 
 sawn asunder and slain with the sword, 
 when all they had to do tO' be left in 
 peace was to betray their church and 
 deny their Lord and Saviour. A nobler 
 fidelity and a finer heroism than theirs is 
 not to be found in the records of church 
 history. What does this mean for the 
 future of the church in China? It means 
 that we have there a church which can 
 be trusted to meet all the issues of the 
 future, however trying they may be, as it 
 has so nobly met those of the recent past. 
 It means what it has always meant since 
 our Saviour said, “Except a corn of 
 wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
 abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth 
 forth much fruit.” If the blood of the 
 martyrs is the seed of the church, 
 then from so great a sowing as the blood 
 of ten thousand martyrs we may expect 
 that God will give us a great reaping. 
 And as it was the church of the early 
 martyrs which carried the gospel to ev- 
 en 7 part of the world that was then 
 known to them, so we may expect that 
 
22 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 this martyr church in China will prove a 
 mighty evangelistic power in all the 
 countries of the far East. And from 
 that church, so filled with the spirit of 
 the old heroic days, perhaps there will 
 come back to us the influences that we 
 need to bring again to this country and 
 to Christian Europe that revival of prim- 
 itive Christianity for which we pray, and 
 without which we shall not see the glory 
 of the latter days. 
 
 Finally, the Chinese are a colonizing 
 people, with the spirit of enterprise and 
 adventure that carries them everywhere 
 that they can find an open door for the 
 bettering of their condition. The most 
 stringent exclusion laws, and sometimes 
 the most cruel and unjust treatment, 
 have not availed to keep multiplied thou- 
 sands of them from entering this coun- 
 try. There are swarms of them in Ja- 
 pan, and Korea, and Formosa, and the 
 Phillippines, and Java, and Sumatra, and 
 Australia, and all the Pacific Islands. 
 Wherever there is work and wages and 
 they can find an entrance they go. This 
 colonizing spirit ensures that the church 
 
THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 23 
 
 in China will be a missionary church, as 
 that of the colonizing Anglo-Saxon 
 has been. With a physical constitu- 
 tion adapted to all climates and de- 
 fiant of all hardships, when the millions 
 of China receive the gospel they will fill 
 the Eastern world with missionaries 
 bearing witness of the Christ who has 
 brought them out of their bondage of 
 corruption and superstition and fear into 
 the liberty of the glory of the children 
 of God. I do not advocate the idea that 
 our church should do less than it is 
 doing in any other field in order to do 
 more for the evangelization of China. 
 Our command is to “Go teach all na- 
 tions,” and the day will come when, both 
 as individuals and as a church, we must 
 answer to Christ for our obedience, to 
 that command. But, taking all things 
 into consideration, it does seem to me 
 that the evangelization of China is the 
 greatest work that yet remains to be 
 done in this world till Christ shall come 
 again. Happy are they whom God shall 
 call to a personal participation in that 
 work. Only less happy are they who, 
 
24 THE MISSIONARY CRISIS IN CHINA. 
 
 being deprived of the privilege of givin 
 to it their personal service, are willing t 
 give their time, their influence, thei 
 prayers and their means for its encou 
 agement and support. 
 
BW8220 .C52 
 
 The missionary crisis in China ... 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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