WESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE

April 28, 1875

It is proposed in this article to consider some of the hindrances to the success of the Gospel in China.

Prominent among these hindrances we would place the peculiar temperament of the people. Their stolidity is something wonderful. Probably no other nation in the world possesses so little enthusiasm. They seem utterly insensible to many of the finer feelings of human nature. They can gaze unmoved upon the most appalling scenes of wretchedness; and they endure the intensest sufferings with stoical indifference. Death itself is looked upon in much the same light with which we may suppose the lower animals regard it. The criminal who is sentenced to have his head chopped off, the executioner who performs the bloody act, and the idle spectators who happen to be standing by, are alike insensible to the solemnity of the occasion.

Still more striking is the insensibility which the Chinese display for moral principle. Filial obedience is their highest notion of piety. Take this out of their code of morals, and they are as depraved in mind and heart as it is, perhaps, possible to imagine. While crime is liable to be punished, and in the most cruel manner, no feeling of shame or disgrace deters the criminal from a repetition of the act. The thief, who promenades the public street with the cangue, or movable pillory, around his neck, attracts no more attention than the fish-monger or burden-bearer; nor has he apparently any less anxiety to be seen. All classes from the humblest beggar to the official mandarins, are alike lost to a sense of truth and honor. No one can show a greater aptitude for concocting falsehoods, or utter them with more unblushing effrontery, than a Chinaman. The ruling passion in the hearts of all is the love of money. Nothing will secure a Chinaman's attention more quickly, or light up his countenance with a more radiant glow, than the mention of cash. For the sake of cash he will cheerfully do the very meanest offices for you; for the sake of cash he will readily sacrifice truth, honor, and all the other virtues. If he has been detected in stealing any thing from you, rather than confess his fault and make amends; he will submit to have double the value squeezed out of him by the magistrate, and to receive a flogging besides.

To this lack of moral principle, which is so painfully evident in the Chinese character, we must add their deep-rooted prejudices against all foreigners and foreign innovations. The Chinese have a wonderfully exalted opinion of their own learning and civilization. Their country is the finest in the world; their Emperor the most majestic personage under heaven. In the whole range of their literature, extensive as it is, there is nothing to disabuse their minds of the idea that their nation is immeasurably superior to every other nation in the world. Those of their literati who have not been brought into contact with foreigners, know as little of the history, the arts, and sciences of other countries as the beggar on the street. And, while an overweening opinion of their own superiority leads them to regard all other nations with contempt; the supercilious conduct

of foreigners in too many instances serves to confirm their prejudices. A foreigner who

has a Chinaman in his employ, frequently teats him more like a slave or a dog than a human being. Two things alone reconcile the native to the indignities he suffers, -- the natural stolidity of his character, and the liberal supply of cash which he receives as wages. The latter is a mantle that covers a multitude of personal abuses.

Furthermore, the lives of many foreigners are so utterly inconsistent with the principles of the Christianity which the missionary teaches, as to present a most serious obstacle to the success of the Gospel. Separated from the restrictions of civilized society, they abandon themselves to dissipation, until they become almost as lost to moral principle as the heathen themselves. Drinking, Sabbath desecration, debauchery are indulged without restraint. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Who can blame the Chinese for not being able to reconcile this glaring discrepancy between the teachings of the Gospel messenger and the dissolute lives of his fellow-countrymen? They know that their country has been far more injured than benefited by foreign commerce. They know that England forced the opium trade upon them at the point of the bayonet. They know that the accursed drug is poured in upon them year after year by foreign vessels, that it is draining the resources of a Government already near the verge of bankruptcy, and leaving behind it a withering waste of wide-spread misery. Is it at all strange that they hesitate to exchange the time-honored maxims of their sainted Confucius for the religion of a people whose intercourse with them as been productive of such unhappy results?

Here, then, are some of the obstacles with which Christianity has to contend in this heathen land. A people in a great measure dead to those finer sensibilities to which the Gospel appeals, with no vital sentiment of truth or honor in their hearts, eaten up by an insatiate desire for gain, obstinately prejudiced against the foreigner, whose vices, indeed, too often scandalize their own notions of morality, firmly wedded to a philosophy which has stood for two thousand years, and which was given them by one of the greatest men in the world's history -- such are the opposing influences arrayed against the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yet China is capable of becoming Christianized, and God is gradually preparing the way for this end. The progress of the Gospel hitherto has been slow, for it has simply been breaking up this fallow ground that has lain neglected for so many ages. In the Chinese character the missionary finds little or nothing to build upon. He must go down to the very substratum of moral principle. He must begin with the simple elements of Christianity, and thoroughly reconstruct the social and moral ideas of a people utterly depraved. Years of labor will be required to break the hoary bands of superstition, and to open the Chinese mind to the beauty and infinite superiority of the religion of the Bible. If the work were simply of man, we might well despair of its ever being accomplished. But what can resist the vital energy which God has infused into his holy religion? There is a divine power in Christianity before which devils stand aghast and against which all human philosophy and science can never successfully contend. Like the Alpine glacier, its tread may be noiseless, but it is irresistible; onward it moves in its majestic might, tearing its way through bulwarks of superstition, and grinding the massive rocks of opposition into powder. "The Lord will famish all the gods of the earth; and man shall worship him, every one from his place; even all the isles of the heathen." " Behold, these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north and west; and these from the land of Sinim."

A.S.