THE BIBLE AND THE MISSIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 3, 16 May 1890, Page 13

THE BIBLE AND THE MISSIONS.

(Illustrated Catholic Missions, Marcb, 1890.)

In the current number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review, Mr. Frederic H. Balfour, who speaks with the authority of one long resident in China, criticises in a plain-spoken manner the methods adopted by European (evidently non-Catholic) missionaries in China, and attributes to thorn the failures which generally mark thoir opera> tions. His strictures ought to command general assent. The first point of Lis criticism is the one which we Catholics hare always urged, in spite of much hostility : it is the uselessnes9 of trying to convert people by Bible distribution :—": — " One specially favourite feature in many missionary reports is a statement of how many Bibles, testaments, and Gospels have bean distributed broad cast among the Chinese people during the period in review. Here is my first point of attack, I believe that the indiscriminate diffusion of the Christian Scriptures among any non-Christian population is in most cases entirely useless, in many cases absolutely mischievous.

The general uselessness of Bible distribution is shown by the old atory of the kind of uses which the Chinesa actually make of the Bibles and testaments given them, aud which Mr. Balfour now repeats with all the authority of his experience :—": — " They are misunderstood, they are not valued, and very often they are not read. They are frequently given to the children to play with, and torn scraps of them may be seen added to the general dirt and mess of the streetgutters, unless, indeed, they fall into more thrifty hands, when, as I have heard, they are used by Chinese shoemakers to line boots with.

The frequent mischievous acs i of the Bibles so scattered abroad follows from the scandal naturally caused to the Chinese mind by some passages, especially those of the Old Testament, and by the utter misunderstanding of others. If Christians are able to miaunderstand the text of Holy Writ— if St. Peter declared in his day that some persons could wrest portions of it to their own destruction — how much more likely is this in the case of a people whose whole ideas and mental training are so absolutely different from our own ? An anecdote of Mr Balfour's brings this point out clearly.

" One day many years ago, I saw my own servant reading a Chinese translation of the New Testament. I looked over hia shoulder, and found that the passage was the 3rd of John — giving the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus. ' Well Chang 'rh,' I said, 'do you understand what you're reading 1 ' Less modest, or less honest than the eunuch of Queen Candacs, he promptly replied that he did. ' And what does being burn again mean ? ' I asked. ' It means comi :g to life again in some other shape when you die,' was the boy's answer ; and his auswer was a perfectly reasonable oae."

Of course, John Chinaman, brought up in Bhuddist ideas of Metempsychosis, very naturally "read into" his Testament the ordinary meaning of " being born again " which he had believed in all his life.

And so Mr Balfour hereby confirms what the Catholics have always maiotained ; that Our Lord's mission to His Church was to "go and track all nations," and not to scatter translations of the Bible before them.

There are other parts of Mr Balfour's article with which we thoroughly sympathise, but want of space does not allow us to refer to them in detail.