Christian Missions.

Southland Times, Issue 19725, 27 January 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

Christian Missions.

-1 THEIR INJURIOUS EFFECT, ES--1 EEC [ALLY VS SEEN IN COLONIAL WARS. I To the Editor. —ln Siam the same fruits arc railed from the upas-tree of misapplicd missionary effort. Alabaster says : I am afraid that the Protes--1 taut missionaries could not produce one good Siamese Christian for each ten thousand•pounds that has been devoted to their work. . , , Con--9 verts, if any, are very rare ; the work of most of the missionaries is I wasted. The Tice’ Christians of China are well known. This, the ! gastronomic side of Chinese Chris- , tianity, has its counterpart in the ' purely economic side. In the London : 'Missionary Society’s report for 1900 iMr Little, one of the agents, tells us |that “ in Ichang the Bibles that are distributed broadcast are largely i used for the manufacture of boot ! soles,” adding that no respectable ) Chinaman would admit a missionary i into his house. The Hon. Finch Hation is even more emphatic concern- ■ ing the results in Australasia. After i stating that ” no one-will have anything to do with a missionary boy if he can by any means get another,” • he summarises the fruits of missionaty labour as under : " One broad fact remains, that, in attempting to ■ convert a South Sea Islander into a Christian, the missionaries rarely fail to an innocent and industrious savage into an idle and worthless scoundrel.” A cloud of witnesses, all testifying to the same effect, could easily be produced, but the above will suffice to characterise in broad, general lines the ethical results of Christianity upon the native mind. Then, again, the propagation of Christianity among these peaceful islanders was accompanied and heralded by the wholesale spoliation of native territory and the outbreak of destructive religious wars 'among the new converts and their ” heathen ” fellow-countrymen. Kotzebue, speaking of the conversions effected by the missionaries at Tahiti, tells us : " This conversion was a spark thrown into a powder magazine, and was followed by a fearful explosion. . . ■. With) the zeal for' making proselytes, the rage of tigers took possession of a people once so gentle, streams of blood flowed, whole races were exterminated. , The same author says : ” It is true that the religion of the missionaries .has, with a great deal of evil, ct|fected some good. It has abolished heathen superstition and an irrational worship, but it has introduced new errors in their stead. It has restrained the vices of theft and incontinence, but it has given birth to bigotry, hypocrisy, and a hatred and contempt of other inodes of faith which were once foreign to the open and benevolent character of the Tajldtiuii. It bus put an end to avowed human sacrifices, but many more human beings have ' been actually sacrificed to it than ever to their heathen gods.” Kotzebue’s voyage | wys undertaken in 1823-26, less than 3U years after the intrusion of the missionaries to these parts. After about .100 years of Christianity this is the result as summarised in the Westminster Review, July, 1875 : "In 1775 Cook found 200,000 people inhabiting Tahiti. A census taken just before the American Exploring Expedition showed the indigenous population to be 9000. In the Sandwich Islands the decline of population is such as history can scarcely l parallel. The early navigators in the Pacific give the population of the group as 400,000, Now it is under 65.000. Depopulation has proceeded

to halve the total number in 2"> years. . , In these beautiful is-

lands, the happy hunting grounds of the exploiting missionary, the failure of Christianity to civilise and humanise the native it written in the blood ant! tears of countless thousands, slaughtered there in the name of the Gospel of Peace. . . . Lest

our presentment of the ease against foreign missions should he regarded as the highly-coloured view of the mere enemy of Christian missions* let us hear the testimony of John Williams himself, the well-known missionary, who laboured for so many years among the people. We shall consult him not only as to the moral types evolved by Christian preaching, but as to the aggressive and persecuting species of Christianity to which that preaching gave rise. Speaking of the. inhabitants of lUaratonga, he writes: "From time j immemorial the inhabitants of this [lovely spot has been addicted to thieving ; as .vest numbers of those who professed Christianity were influenced by example merely, no sooner had the powerful excitement produced by the transition of one state of society to another subsided than they returned to the habits in which from their infancy they had been trained. In a word, instead of wooing a backward people along the path of honesty mid self-support by enlightened methods adopted at once to win them to civilisation and to retain them to it in unimpaired strength and moral value, the Christian missionary only supplied them with a new, brand of superstition from which (hey imbibed a fresh zeal for bloodthirsty proselytism,’’ On this head our missionary makes th- following melancholy confession : " It is a remarkable fact that in no island of importance has Christianity been introduced without a war, hut it is right,’’ he says, "to observe that in every instance the heathen have been the aggressirs.’’ The nature of the aggression nay he surmised from what follows: “War broke out at Mnugara in consequence of the heathen dancing and playing games on Snndav and threatening the Christians. In this war, which ended favourably 10 ; Urn Christians, the Christian party hart* acted with great cruelty towards their enemies, by hewing I hem to pieces while they were begging - for inoroy.” This spectacle of bloodshed for the glory of (loil enables us to understand the dark allusions of Wordsworth, when he uttered the famous lines : “ Thy instrument ■ Jn working out a pure intent Is slaughter,—

Voa J carnage is God’s daughter.” The transplanting of an alien religion into the receptive and unreason-' ing soil of the native mind ,oo often means the revival and recrudescence of the worst forms of the imported superstition. To cite one instance out of many, it may sullice (o quote the fate that overtook the unhappy Sandwich Islanders after their embrace of the Christian religion ; So far back as 1856 a writer in (lie Westminster Review (July. 1856) complained ” that the efforts cf a few zealous missionaries are tending ns fast as possible to lay waste the whole country. Thousands of acres that before products! the finest crops are now sandy plains. Provisions are so extremely scarce that not long since the King sent to beg a little bread of the American Consul ; (ho fishery is almost deserted, and milling flourishes but (he mission s'hool. At this school and from the pulpit, the people are taught (o take no thought for the morrow, mil to expect to fie clothed like the Idles and fed by ravens, and, moreover, leal all men were created free and equal ; so that they indulged their natural violence, refused to work for (heir chiefs', whom they looked down upon, and made Bingham (the American missionary) virtually (heir autocrat.” Similarly we have (he testimony of Dr Lctourneau us regards the Tahitians I ” The conversion to Chris- 1 tianity in Tahiti, effected at the cost of fearfully bloody civil wars. was quite apparent. Debahch became more general, more revolting, and it was covered over with a veil of hypocrisy. The women did not go on board the ships in the daytime—they went, or they were taken there, at night. Amorous desires were so strong in these people that, in spite of the Anglican despotism, the con- 1 versation of the women and children was constantly upon the most obscene subjects, and they would talk in the most barefaced manner.” Thus we sec how pmselyti.sm anddemoralisation go hand in hand. " Rice Christians ” will certainly not ho ‘‘ nice ” Christians either from an ethical or from an intellectual point, of view : and in all ages and in every country tin' chosen methods of evangelisation have always been those of force or fraud, or an imholy of both. —T am. etc. RATIONALIST. South Invercargill.