IN CELESTIAL REALMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14690, 26 May 1911, Page 8

IN CELESTIAL REALMS.

THE CHINESE AS SOLDIERS.

In- the course of an address at the Wellington Y.M.C.A. Mr. Oliver Burgess, who is on a visit to New Zealand after 20 years' service in China, under the auspices of the China Inland Mission, gave some particulars of tho enormous amount of traffic on the Yangtse-kiang River and its numerous branches (says the Post). Hugo quantities of timber were brought down on rafts, which assumed the dimensions of largo villages, the inhabitants of which (young and old), with all the means of subsistence, travelled in that way for hundreds of miles. On arrival at' its destination the. timber was broken up and distributed, and the floating village and its inhabitants returned home. Occasionally one could see the remains of pirates, who had been captured by troops and executed. Thousands of ducks were also brought clown the river for hundreds of miles, and sold at tho markets as the demand necessitated. He lived in the north-west of China, near the borders of Tibet, nearly 2000 miles up the river. Sometimes there would bo 300 junks (or yachts) all racing up the river together. At tho rapids it sometimes took 80 or 100 men to pull the, vessel along. On the road tho missionaries occasionally landed and preached to the villagers. In the upper reaches navigation was very difficult, and a great many wrecks occurred. "There are Chinamen, and Chinamen;" large numbers were training as soldiers, and ho had no doubt they would make as good soldiers as the Japanese. In that part of China there must be* about 300 millions of people, owning untold wealth in many cases, who knew nothing of other countries, and did not want to know. In China as a whole, however, the poor were very poor, though tho rich wore very rich —a result largely due to the constant expenditure on religious offerings and tho custom of letting off crackers on every possible occasion. They thought, he went on to say, that Christianity was a great thing, but very few Christians would make the sacrifice for Christ that the Chinese did for their religion. The Church of God was not moving, but sleeping; it was one of the weakest, flabbiest things of the 20th century. When he saw what sacrifices the Chinese made for their religion he could not help feeling that there was Boniethinc wrong.