IN DEFENCE OF THE CHINESE BELIEF.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9301, 31 December 1895, Page 6

IN DEFENCE OF THE CHINESE BELIEF.

.*» T. C. Hayllar, in the Nineteenth Century. It has always struck mc that Protestant missionaries never give sufficient weight to the extreme astuteness and subtlety of a Chinese intellect which has been trained in dialectics ; nor do they seem sufficiently to appreciate the improbabilities of the Christian scheme of salvation as regarded from the same point of view. I think it very doubtful whether the cult of the Chinaman does not strike deeper root into his daily life than the Christian religion does into that of any nation in Europe. Certain primitive and cardinal virtues are, beyond question, a living force among them"; and although they may not live up to all the precepts of Confucius or Liao-tsze, they etrive to pay their debts, honour their parents, and be charitable according to their means. Even Englishmen do not sell all that they have and give the proceeds to the poor ; nor is the the quality of meekness very widely practised among them, because they are aware that they could not exist as a prosperous and victorious people if the commands to act in that manner were carried out in their completeness. Nevertheless, charity flourishes among them, and the practice of humility is not extinct. Chinese official documents, probably, do protest too much, but their citations from their sage 3 and. masters are not the sham those whose duty it is to controvert them often believe. I think we ourselves would find it much more difficult to justify our treatment of China by anything to be found within the four corners of the New Testament, than the Chinese would to find a sanction for their dealings with us from the teachings of their sacred books. The simple fact is, that there do not exist any reasons for the Christianisation of China, except from the standpoint of the missionaries themselves. Their superstitions, if ridiculous in European eyes, are, surely perfectly harmless. Wherein lies the moral harm of Feng Shui ? or in that curious, widespread belief in the duality of nature ? Again, why, should a Chinaman abandon, at the bidding of anyone, s, cult so essentially humane and deeply poetical as the worship of his ancestors ? The Chinaman who did so v/ould nap be a better Chinaman. The chances are that he would be a vagabond, a diclassi item, instead of a respectable link in an endless chain of social continuity. His quaint respect for written papers is but a poetic form of his worship of what he considers the highest product of the human mind, itself a gift from Heaven. To destroy his faith in such things is to pick out the mortar which holds together the fabric of society. Why, again, seek to graft similes and images drawn from the desert and from nomadic life on to the literature of people brought up in settled communities and amid flowing rivers ?. A Chinaman of the great well-watered plains has no particular respect, for instance, for sheep. When they say that foreigners smell like sheep, it is in a spirit of opprobrium. A command to "feed my sheep" possesses, therefore, no-poetical significance to them, but is rather ridiculous than otherwise. It forms no part of my purpose to belittle the efforts of the good men and women who work in the field of missionary enterprise in the far East. They are quite capable of defending their own case, and have powerful pens advocating their cause all over Europe. But it is well to point out that it is one which emphatically has two sides. The Chinese only ask to be let alone. The burden of proof is with those who contend that their request shoxild not be granted.