WESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE

November 14, 1877

BY REV. A. STRITMATTER

Admitting that the progress of Christianity in China has been slow, could we expect it to have been otherwise? Look at the obstacles it has had to encounter. National prejudice and national pride; superstitions of forty centuries' growth; natural stolidity and immobility of character; callousness of conscience and stagnancy of thought. Nor are these the most serious. The same lands which have brought to China the Gospel of eternal life have planted in her bosom the seeds of irremediable death. Intelligent natives say to us, "Your doctrine is good; it teaches what is right between man and man; but you are the men who bring opium to our shores; you offer us with one hand a religion of love, and with the other a drug which is destroying our people by the million. We don't want your religion." While we do not attempt to vindicate those who have not the moral resolution to reject the bait of destruction proffered to them, yet we believe that in the opium traffic is found one of the most gigantic impediments to the success of the Gospel. And this impediment has been reared by men from Gospel lands.

But notwithstanding these obstacles, the triumphs of Christianity are visible before us to-day. But it may be asked of us, "What are your native converts worth? Are they honest and reliable Christians? Do they know any thing of the vital power of godliness, or have they attached themselves to foreigners simply through hope of worldly gain?" Doubtless the number of insincere professors is great, and comparatively few of our so-called converts have given satisfactory evidence of a deep and thorough experience of the regenerating power of the Gospel on their own hearts. There are many tares among the wheat, as might naturally be expected in the first harvest from a new soil. But we do not look for ripe Christians in newly made converts, and least of all in heathen converts. The seeds of superstition transmitted through a hundred generations are not easily or quickly eradicated. Granted that our Chinese converts are not all that could have been wished, nor even all that might have been expected; yet they will not suffer in comparison with the first converts of other nations. What was the general character of the Christians of the Roman Empire under the reign of Constantine, after three hundred years of proselytism? What was the measure of piety among the priests and monks, the clergy and laity, of the Middle Ages, and even down to the times of Henry VIII and Charles V? For real piety and intelligent appreciation of the truths of Christianity, our Chinese Christians are in no respect inferior to those of the ancient Goths and Britons. Nay, we feel we are doing them injustice by the comparison. Among them are men of power, who preach with zeal and eloquence the truths they have so lately learned; some have laid down their lives for the Gospel's sake, and many suffer bitter persecution, loss of property, etc., with no hope of worldly compensation, yet clinging unflinchingly to the faith they have espoused. Here is matter for encouragement, gratitude, and hope. The first faint rays of Gospel light may indeed fall with feeble effect

on the dark and benumbed regions of paganism. But wait until the sun has risen above the horizon; wait until he mounts in his majesty to the zenith, and from mid-heaven pours a flood of light and warmth on the frozen landscape below; then the mists of superstition will flee, and the icebergs and glaciers of impassive stoicism melt under his all-powerful rays.

Let not the Church be despondent, then, when she compares the smallness of the results already accomplished with the magnitude of the work lying before us. It is true the hosts of opposition are strong, but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They are such weapons as Paul wielded, when he stood in chains before the tyrant of Judea, and made him tremble as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. They are such weapons as Luther wielded when he nailed his ninety-five theses against the church-door of Wittemberg; when, from its pulpit, he proclaimed the doctrine of salvation by grace with a voice that reverberated through Europe, aroused the nations from their torpid slumber, and defied the thunders of the Vatican. Our weapons are the sword of the Spirit -- the Word of God -- which is quick and powerful; the helmet of salvation; the shield of faith, which is able to quench all the fiery darts of the adversary. If, with such heavenly armor, our warfare is ineffectual, surely the fault will lie, not in the weapons themselves, but in the men who wield them.

Discouraged, are we? No, we are encouraged. We have unshaken faith in the divine power of the Gospel, and in its ultimate triumph over paganism. Our only source of sadness is that our numbers are so few, and that we have only one short life to devote to this work. Gladly would we labor on until the Millennium, knowing that there is an eternity of rest beyond. But few though our numbers and short our period of toil, we believe that God will establish the work of our hands upon us. We are contending in the cause of truth, and truth is mighty and will prevail. The kingdoms of this world belong to our Lord and to his Christ; and the God of truth will not delegate his dominions to the prince of lies and darkness. What though the massive stronghold of superstition still rears aloft its colossal proportions, casting a dark and tenebrious shade to the limits of the horizon? "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." Already the walls are beginning to crumble, the light of the nineteenth century is penetrating its crevices, and, sooner or later, the mighty structure of idolatry and ignorance will be hurled from its rotten foundations and buried in the ruins of the past.