Not only has the old work been resumed with vigour but much new work has been opened. Within a year and a quarter after the relief of the Legations by the Allies, twenty-five new mission stations had been opened and 373 new missionaries had entered China, and each succeeding year has seen considerable additions to the number. The Rev. Dr. George F. Pentecost, who visited China in 1903, writes--

''The outlook seems to me most encouraging. I find the more thoughtful missionaries enthusiastic in their forecast for the future. My own judgment is that the cause of missions, so far as foundation work and increased power for work, has been advanced at least twenty-five years by the massacres of 1900. I think the common people are thoroughly convinced that missions cannot be destroyed, and I am equally convinced that the authorities are also convinced that it is vain for them to rage and set themselves against Christianity. The one thing which an Asiatic recognizes is power and facts accomplished, and in the rebuilding of our missions and the awakening already begun and the reinforcement of the missions in men and material means they see and recognize power. Their own temples are falling into decay and ruin and our new buildings are rising in prominence and beauty. Their ignorant priesthood is sinking deeper and deeper into degradation, while our missionaries are every where known and recognized as men of 'light and learning.' . . .

It seems to me from all I can learn that there is no fear of another anti- foreign outbreak.''

And these are but a few of the many illustrations that could be given. Everywhere, the doors are open and Chinese are now being baptized by Protestant missionaries at the rate of about 15,000 a year, while a far larger number are enrolled as inquirers or catechumens. The interdenominational conference of missionaries at Kuling, August 7, 1903, declared:--

''It is now a fact that there is not one of the more than nineteen hundred counties of China and Manchuria from which we are shut out, and before the hundredth year of our work begins, we can say that if the gospel is not preached to every creature in China, the reason must be sought outside China. The opportunities of work are varied in their kind, vast in their extent. Never before have men crowded to hear the gospel as they are crowding now in the open air and indoors; in our chapels and in our guest-rooms we have opportunities to preach Christ such as can scarcely be found outside China. Never before has there been such an eager desire for education as there is now; our schools, both of elementary and of higher grades, are full, and everywhere applicants have to be refused.

Never before has there been such a demand for Christian literature as there is now; our tract societies and all engaged in supplying converts and inquirers with reading material are doing their utmost, but are not able to overtake the demand; and the demand is certain to increase, for it comes from the largest number of people in the world reading one language.

The medical work has from the first found an entrance into hearts that were closed against other forms of work. Its sphere of influence grows ever wider and is practically unlimited. Unique opportunities of service are afforded us by the large number of blind people, by lepers, and those suffering from incurable diseases; by the deaf and dumb, the insane and other afflicted people. In China the poor are always with us, and whensoever we will we may do them good.''

Not least among the hopeful signs for the future is the new treaty between the United States and China which was signed at Shanghai, October 8, 1903, and unanimously ratified by the United States Senate December 18, 1903. It not only secured an ''open door'' in China for Americans, but, if the veteran ''most favoured nation'' clause is again pressed into service, a priceless benefit to the whole civilized world as well as to China herself. For this treaty abolished the exasperating ''likin'' (the inland tax heretofore exacted by local officials on goods in transit through their territories); confirmed the right of American citizens to trade, reside, travel, and own property in China; extended to China the United States' copyright laws; gained a promise from the Chinese Government to establish a patent office in which the inventions of United States'

citizens may be protected; and made valuable regulations regarding trade-marks, mining concessions, judicial tribunals for the hearing of complaints, diplomatic intercourse, and several other matters which, though sanctioned by custom, were often abridged or violated.

The treaty, moreover, called for the opening of two additional treaty ports, one of which is at Feng-tien-fu, more generally known as Mukden, important not only as a city of 200,000 inhabitants but as the capital of Manchuria and with both rail and river connection with the Gulf of Pe-chi-li and the imperial province of Chih-li. The other is at An-tung, which is important because of its situation on the Yalu River opposite the Korean frontier. Of course, the Russia-Japan War has post- poned the opening of these ports, but the recognition of China's right to open them by treaty with the United States is none the less significant.

Most important of all, the treaty removes, so far as any such enactment can remove, the last barrier to the extension of Christianity throughout China. In Article XIII of the English treaty with China, September 5, 1902, Great Britain agreed to join in a commission to secure peaceable relationships between converts and non-converts in China. But the American treaty goes much farther, as the following extract (Article XIV) will show:--

''The principles of the Christian religion, as professed by the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches, are recognized as teaching men to do good and to do to others as they would have others do to them. Those who quietly profess and teach these doctrines shall not be harassed or persecuted on account of their faith. Any person, whether citizen of the United States or Chinese convert, who, according to these tenets, peaceably teaches and practices the principles of Christianity shall in no case be interfered with or molested therefor. No restrictions shall be placed on Chinese joining Christian churches. Converts and non-converts, being Chinese subjects, shall alike conform to the laws of China, and shall pay due respect to those in authority, living together in peace and amity; and the fact of being converts shall not protect them from the consequences of any offense they may have committed before or may commit after their admission into the church, or exempt them from paying legal taxes levied on Chinese subjects generally, except taxes levied and contributions for the support of religious customs and practices contrary to their religion.

Missionaries shall not interfere with the exercise by the native authorities of their jurisdiction over Chinese subjects; nor shall the native authorities make any distinction between converts and non-converts, but shall administer the laws without partiality, so that both classes can live together in peace.

''Missionary societies of the United States shall be permitted to rent and to lease in perpetuity as the property of such societies, buildings or lands in all parts of the Empire for missionary purposes and, after the title-deeds have been found in order and duly stamped by the local authorities, to erect such suitable buildings as may be required for carrying on their good work.''

This gives new prestige to American missionary effort and legally confirms the opening of the Empire from end to end to missionary residence, activity and toleration. All that France harshly obtained for Roman Catholic missions by the Berthemy convention of 1865 and by the haughty ultimatum of M.

Gerard at the close of the war with Japan, the United States has now peacefully secured with the apparent good-will of the Chinese Government.

XXVIII

THE PARAMOUNT DUTY OF CHRISTENDOM

IT would be unwise to underestimate the gravity of the situation, or to assume that the most numerous and conservative nation on the globe has been suddenly transformed from foreign haters to foreign lovers. The world may again have occasion to realize that the momentum of countless myriads is an awful force even against the resources of a higher civilization, as the Romans found to their consternation when the barbarian hordes overran the Empire. We do not know what disturbances may yet occur or what proportions they may assume. It may be that much blood will yet be shed. Inflamed passions will certainly be slow in subsiding.

Men who are identified with the old era will not give up without a struggle. It took 300 years to bring England from pagan barbarism to Christian civilization, and China is vaster far and more conservative than England. The world moves faster now, and the change-producing forces of the present exceed those of former centuries as a modern steam hammer exceeds a wooden sledge. But China is ponderous, and a few decades are short for so gigantic a transformation.

Meantime, much depends on the future conduct of foreigners.

It is hard enough for the proud-spirited Chinese to see the aliens coming in greater numbers than ever and entrenching themselves more and more impregnably, and a continuance of the policy of greed and injustice will deepen an already deep resentment. The almost invincible prejudice against the foreigner is a serious hindrance to the regeneration of China.

''This fact emphasizes the need for using every means possible for the breaking down of such a prejudice. Every careless or willful wound to Chinese susceptibilities, or unnecessary crossing of Chinese superstitions, retards our own work and increases the dead wall of opposition on the part of this people.''[101]

[101] The Rev. Dr. J. C. Garritt, Hang chou.

The proper way to deal with the Chinese was illustrated by the Rev. J. Walter Lowrie of the Presbyterian Mission at Paoting-fu when, as a token of appreciation for his services to the city in connection with the retaliatory measures of the foreign troops shortly after the Boxer outbreak, the magistrate raised a special fund among wealthy Chinese, bought a fine tract of sixteen acres and presented it to the mission as a gift.

The tract had been occupied for many years by several families of tenants who had built their own houses, but who were now to be evicted. Of course, Mr. Lowrie was not responsible for them. But he insisted that they should be dealt with fairly, and be paid a reasonable price for their homes and the improvements that they had made so that they could rent land and establish themselves elsewhere. In addition, he was at pains to find work for them until their new crops became available. Their affectionate greeting of Mr. Lowrie as we walked about the place clearly showed their gratification.

There is not the slightest trouble with the Chinese when they are treated with ordinary decency as brother men.

At any rate, in the name of that civilization and Christianity which we profess, as well of common humanity, let foreign nations abandon the methods of brutality and rapine. If we expect to convert the Chinese, we must exemplify the principles we teach. It is not true that the Chinese cannot understand justice and magnanimity. Even if it were true, it does not follow that we should be unjust and pitiless. Let us instruct them in the higher things. How are they ever to learn, if we do not teach them? But as a matter of fact, the Chinese are as amenable to reason as any people in the world. Their temperament and inertia and long isolation from the remainder of mankind have made them slow to grasp a new idea. But they will get it if they are given reasonable time, and when they do once get it, they will hold it. Whether, therefore, further trouble occurs, depends in part upon the conduct of foreign nations. Justice and humanity in all dealings with the Chinese, while not perhaps wholly preventing outbreaks of hostility, will at least give less occasion for them.

But however trying the period of transition may be, the issue is not for a moment doubtful. Progress invariably wins the victory over blind conservatism. The higher idea is sure to conquer the lower. With all their admixture of selfishness and violence, the fact remains that the forces operating on China to-day include the vital regenerative element for human society. It is futile to expect that China could ever regenerate herself without outside aid. Spontaneous regeneration is an exploded theory in society as well as in biology. Life always comes from without.

The spirit of China's new system of education shows that there is imminent danger of the misuse of modern methods, even when they have been adopted. All her institutions are conducted on principles which virtually debar Christians either as students or professors. Infidelity, however, has free entrance as long as it conforms to the external forms imposed by the State. ''Anti-conservative but anti-Christian,'' the educational movement has been characterized by Dr. W. M.

Hayes of Teng-chou. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, so long President of the Imperial Chinese University, declares that ''if Christians at home only knew what a determined effort is being made to exclude Christian teachers and Christian text-books from Chinese Government schools, from the Imperial University down, they would exert themselves to give a Christian education to the youth of China.'' A single mission institution, like the Shantung Protestant University, with its union of the best educational methods and the highest ideals of Christian character, will do more for the real enlightenment of China than a dozen provincial colleges where gambling, irreligion and opium smoking are freely tolerated and a failure to worship the tablet of Confucius is deemed the only cardinal sin.

In view of all these things, the regeneration of China becomes a question of transcendent importance, a question demanding the broadest statesmanship and the supremest effort; a question involving the future destinies of the race. ''On account of its mass, its homogeneity, its high intellectual and moral qualities, its past history, its present and prospective relations to the whole world, the conversion of the Chinese people to Christianity is the most important aggressive enterprise now laid upon the Church of Christ.''[102] It would be a calamity to the whole world if the dominant powers of Asia should continue to be heathen. But if they are not to be, immediate and herculean efforts must be made to regenerate them. Sir Robert Hart declares that the only hope of averting ''the yellow peril'' lies either in partition among the great Powers, which he regards as so difficult as to be impracticable, or in a miraculous spread of Christianity which will transform the Empire. Beyond question, Sir Robert Hart is right. It is too late now to avoid the issue. The impact of new forces is rousing this gigantic nation, and Western nations must either conquer or convert.

Conquering is out of the question for reasons already given.[103]

The only alternative is conversion. In these circumstances ''the yellow peril becomes the golden opportunity of Christendom.''[104]

[102] Smith, ''Rex Christus,'' p. 237

[103] Chapter XXV.

[104] The Rev. Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock.

And by conversion is not meant ''civilization.'' Here is the fundamental error of the pseudonymous writer of ''Letters From a Chinese Official.'' He evidently knows little or nothing of the missionary force or of the motives which control it. He writes as a man who has lived in a commercial and political atmosphere, and who feels outraged, and with some justice, by the policy which European nations have adopted towards China. From this view-point, it was easy for the quick- witted author to satirize our defects and to laud the virtues, some of them unquestionably real, of his native land. But it does not follow that his indictment holds against the Christian people of the West, who reprobate as strongly as the author the duplicity and brutality of foreign nations in their dealings with China. The West has something more to offer China than a civilization. As a matter of fact, the best people of the West are not trying to give China a civilization at all, but a gospel. With whatever is good in Chinese civilization, they have no wish to interfere. It is true that some changes in society invariably follow the acceptance of Christianity, but these changes relate only to those things that are always and everywhere inherently wrong, irrespective of the civilization to which they appear to belong. The gospel transformed ''the Five Points'' in New York not because they were uncivilized but because they were evil. It will do in China only what it does in America--fight vice, cleanse foulness, dispel superstition.

Christianity is the only power which does this. It has transformed every people among whom it has had free course.

It has purified society. It has promoted intelligence. It has elevated woman. It has fitted for wise and beneficent use of power. Of those who deny this, Lowell says:

''So long as these very men are dependent for every privilege they enjoy upon that religion which they discard, they may well hesitate a little before seeking to rob the Christian of his faith and humanity of its hope in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.''

No degradation is beyond the reach of its regenerating power.

Witness the New Hebrides, Metlakatla, the Fiji, Georgia and Friendly Islands. Even England, Germany and America themselves are in evidence. Christianity lifted them out of a barbarism and superstition as dense as any prevailing among the heathen nations of this age. It can effect like changes in China if it is given the opportunity.

But it is said that the Chinese do not want to be converted.

A distinguished General of the United States army declared, after his return from Peking in 1900:--''I must say that I did not meet a single intelligent Chinaman who expressed a desire to embrace the Christian religion. The masses are against Christianity.''[105] It is pleasant to know that it is so common for unconverted Americans to go to that army officer for spiritual guidance that the failure of the Chinese to do so disappointed him. Most men would hardly have expected a people who were smarting under defeat to open their hearts to a commander of the conquering army. But hundreds of other foreigners in China, myself included, can testify that they have heard intelligent Chinese express a desire to embrace the Christian religion, and the fact that there are in China to-day over a hundred thousand Chinese, to say nothing of myriads of enrolled catechumens, who have publicly confessed their faith in Christ and who have tenaciously adhered to it under sore persecution is tangible evidence that some Chinese at least are disposed to accept Christianity.

[105] The Christian Advocate, New York, June 11, 1903.

Do they want Him? ''It would please you,'' a missionary writes, ''to see these poor people feeling after God, and their eagerness to learn more and more.'' It is not uncommon for converts to travel ten, fifteen and even twenty miles to attend service. The Sunday I was in Ichou-fu, I met a fine-looking young man, named Yao Chao Feng, who had walked sixteen miles to receive Christian baptism, and several other Chinese were present who had journeyed on foot from seventeen to thirty-three miles. In Paoting-fu, I heard of a mother and daughter who had painfully hobbled on bound feet thirteen miles that they might learn more about the new faith. In another city, 800 opium-smokers kneeled in a church and asked God to help them break the chains of that frightful habit. Surely He who puts His fatherly arms around the prodigal and kissed him was in that humble church and answered the prayer of those poor, sin-cursed men. It would be easy to fill a book with such instances.

But suppose the Chinese do not want Christ. What of it?

Did they want the distinguished General? On the contrary, he had to fight his way into Peking at the mouth of the cannon and the point of the bayonet, over the dead bodies of Chinese and through the ruins of Chinese towns. Do ''the masses''

desire Christ anywhere? Mr. Moody used to say that the people of the United States did not want Christ and would probably reject Him if He came to them as He came to the Jews of old.

The question is not at all whether the Chinese or anybody else desire Christ, but whether they need Him, and a man's answer to that question largely depends upon his own relations to Christ. If we need Him, the Chinese do. If He has done anything for us, if He has brought any dignity and power and peace into our lives, the probabilities are that He can do as much for the Chinese.