RELIGION OF A CHINAMAN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10767, 16 May 1911, Page 2

RELIGION OF A CHINAMAN.

MISSIONARIES' REPLY TO A CHALLENGE. CAUSE OF UNREST. "The Chinese do not want Europe's cast-off theology," said Mr Lin ShaoYang in his remarkbale book embodying ail appeal to Christian countries to withdraw their "Bibliolatrous missionaries" from China. "What," he asked, "will the unlettered missionary, do with a Chinese who has read Spencer or Netzsche P" The Rev. T. W. Pearce, of the London Missionary Society, who has been working as a missionary in China since 1879, discusses tliis book. "It is probably the outcome of a movement which was active in South China when I left a year ago. The Confucianists, who include the majorty of the educated Chnese, found many years ago that it would be necessary to give life and dynamic force to Confucianism if it was to combat Christianity. Now Buddhism in China is degenerate and Confucianism is not and never was a. religion, but only a code of ethical rules of conduct. | "A few years ago an edict was pro- 1 mulgated making Confucius 'the Equal of Heaven,' and henceforth he was to bo worshipped as such. I think nothing could havo more astonished him in his lifetime. A new cult was thus started, places of worship were set up alongside Christian churches, one day of worship was set aside in seven in the Christian fashion, and religious services very much' after the manner of ours was started. This alone is a proof of the progress and reception of Christianity in China, and an answer to Mr Lin Sliao-Yang's book." The Rev. B. Baring-Gould, the foreign secretary of the Church Missionary Society, said: "I am convinced that even if every foreigner now withdrew from China a Christian Church would still continue. There will always lie people in every country who object to the teaching of religion of any kind, and we could not cease our work on account of that. Against Mr Lin ShaoYang there are numerous instances of educated Chinese in high positions welcoming the missionaries. The merchants of Hong-Kong, non-Christians, raised thousands of pounds for St. Stephen's College for boys and have given us entire control of it. "When their boys had been educated there and sent to English universities they came to us and said, 'Now our sons want cultured and educated wives. You must educate our daughters.' They gave large sums towards the founding of a girls' college for the daughters of the upper-class Chinese. "A cause of a great deal of the un T rest which is evident in India and the Far East is due to the doubts and religious unsettlement among the adherents .of the old religions. This unsettlement is brought about by the introduction of the Western education, which necessarily discredits the old religions and fails to supply anything in their place. Christianity is the only substitute."