designed with a view to this end, rather than to serve as evangelistic agencies proper. The Educational Association of China, founded in 1890, links all engaged in teaching in co-operation for the promotion of educational interests. Since the publication of the imperial scheme for elementary and advanced schools and colleges, the curricula of mission schools have been remodelled to bring them into line with Government requirements as far as possible. Up to the present such schools have failed to secure recognition from the Government, and so find a place in the educational machinery of the country. The example of Japan justifies the expectation that before long recognition will be extended to all such institutions which satisfy the educational requirements of the Government examiners.
Resuming consideration of agencies directly evangelistic, we now hark back to the medical work. Mission hospitals both create suspicion and allay it. A nation whose materia medica includes thirty-two parts, or products, of the human body, is necessarily suspicious of the doctor with his magic anodyne, and no less wonderful knife. A bottle of preserved cherries on a doctor's mantelshelf was interpreted by a Chinese as a collection of eyes taken from the heads of innocent children, and a riot was the consequence, with the destruction of much valuable property and the peril of many lives, happily without a fatality.
But if the doctor is uncanny, who comes after eyes and hearts, how utterly inexplicable is the action of the preacher, who asks for nothing, and gets more, and less, than his desire? Motiveless volitions are unknown to the Chinese; intangible motives are moonshine to him. So the preacher is an object of extreme suspicion, and, therefore, of intense dislike. But the skill and devotion of the doctor opens for the patient a window, through which he dimly sees the substratum of a common humanity beneath the outlandish exterior, and the rest is easy. The hospital door has been the widest door to the Church in many a town in China.
In 1905 there were 301 mission doctors in China, of whom 94 were ladies; 166 hospitals and 241 dispensaries. As many as 35,301 in-patients and 1,044,948 out-patients were treated. Special attention is paid to lepers, and to the care of the insane.
In addition to treating patients, the doctors are engaged in training students in medicine, surgery, and the allied subjects. Here, again, amalgamation is in the air. The most notable example of this is the Union Medical College at Peking, in which the doctors of several missions co-operate. The Dowager-Empress gave ten thousand taels to this institution. Students are attracted from all over the empire, and the diplomas of the College are recognised by Government. At the other end of the land, in Canton, a Medical College for Women has been established by the American Presbyterian Mission. A Medical Association looks after the interests of the foreign doctors. It publishes a magazine bi-monthly, and is engaged in reducing to uniformity the system of medical nomenclature, and publishing textbooks in which the new terms are used.
The Bible.
The translation, printing, and distribution of the Bible have occupied the energies of the ablest Protestant missionaries. These were not the first to begin the work, but they have carried it furthest towards completion. The first Chinese Bible was printed at Serampore, India, in 1820; and was the joint production of Joannes Lassar, an Armenian Christian born in Macao, and the Rev. John Marshman, who had never been to China. The most important revision, and the most popular at the present day, is that known as the "Delegates Version." In the New Testament it is the production of a committee of delegates from the various Churches, who began work in Shanghai in 1847, viz., Bishop Boone, the Rev. Drs. Bridgman, Medhurst, and Milne, and the Rev. J. Stronach. The Old Testament portion was produced by the last three; and the whole was completed in 1853.
Since then many versions in High Wenli, Easy Wenli, Mandarin, and various local dialects, have been produced.
A thorough revision of the whole Chinese Bible has been proceeding since 1890. The work is now in the hands of a committee for Wenli, and another committee for Mandarin.
Three Bible Societies are engaged in the production and distribution of the Bible, New Testament, and Scripture portions, with or without notes and introductions.
In 1905 the circulation was as follows:—
| Bibles. | New Testaments. | Portions. | |||
| British and Foreign Bible Society | … | … | 16,488 | 40,525 | 1,018,167 |
| American Bible Society… | … | … | 7,078 | 31,672 | 498,554 |
| Scottish National Bible Society | … | … | 2,566 | 21,218 | 883,490 |
| Total…… | … | … | 21,132 | 93,415 | 2,400,211 |
With the exception of a few grants to officials all these have been sold, a contrast to the days when Gützlaff and his successors failed at times to secure acceptance for such books even as a gift.
Results.
As stated above, Dr. Milne made a calculation in 1820 that if Christianity in China were in every succeeding twenty years to double its access of numbers, as it had in the first twenty, then at the close of the first hundred years there would be a thousand Christians in China. But at the end of these first hundred years, at the Conference in Shanghai in 1907, it was announced that the actual number of Church members alone was 200,000. If to these be added the number of those who attend regularly, but are not yet baptized, and the children, whom Milne included, the grand total is 720,000.
Church members are drawn largely from the farmer, working, and shop-keeping classes, with a fair admixture of literary men, and a very few officials of low grade, as in every country the appeal has been made largely to these first classes, pauperes evangelizantur. Special attention, however, is now being devoted to the scholars and officials, and to the student class from which the ranks of both these classes are recruited.
Christians are organised into Churches, which are developing rapidly along the three lines of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation.
Self-Government.
In every Protestant mission it has been the object of the foreigners to train a native ministry which shall, in time, assume the lead in the native Church, controlling, teaching, and guiding it. The natives have responded well to the trust imposed upon them, and have shown themselves thoroughly capable of directing their own affairs and administering their own funds.
In most missions the foreigner takes his place alongside the native minister in the church courts, and shares in the work of legislation and administration on the principle of one man one vote. His influence beyond this single vote lies in the force of his character, the ripeness of his experience, and the depth of his affection for the Chinese among whom he works. In time, even this assessorship will disappear, and the Chinese Church will stand entirely alone, making its own laws, shaping its own doctrine, and "dreeing its own weird." This is the aim of the foreign mission work, and all approximations to it are welcomed by the missionaries.
Self-Support.
Chinese Christians are rice-eaters, but the rice which they consume is their own, and not a foreign dole. The home societies necessarily support a staff of preachers, teachers, and hospital assistants. Beyond this, money subscribed in the West is not expended on the support of Chinese.
The latest complete statistics, those for 1905, put the total contributions of Chinese Christians for the year at $301,263 (Mexican). The greatest advance in this line has been made by Churches in the south-east. There the average annual contribution per member is $4·50 (Mexican). The salaries of all their native missionaries are paid by the people over whom they are ordained, and 80 per cent. of the pay of native preachers is contributed by the natives.
Self-Propagation.
The native Churches have long recognised their duty to their non-Christian neighbours. Additions to the Church are more the result of work done by unofficial Church members than through the immediate agency of their leaders and teachers. But, beyond individual effort, native missions to the unevangelised have been established by some of the churches. These are organised, financed, controlled and manned entirely by natives. The islands of Namoa and Tungshan on the south-east coast are worked by such organisations.
From this brief resumé of Protestant mission work in China it will be seen that the result is a purely native Church, with a history, an ideal, and a future; that Christianity in China is no longer a negligible force; and that, judged by Western standards, the Chinese Christian, while he may not in the aggregate be a "plaster saint," is a man with an honest conviction, a message, and a hope, and, as such, is entitled to respect and sympathy.
Bibliography.
The volumes of the "Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal"; the periodicals of the various missionary societies; the "Records" of the Conferences of 1877, 1890, and 1907; "A Century of Missions," by the Rev. D. MacGillivray, B.D.
