The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1900. THE TROUBLES IN CHINA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 25, 21 June 1900, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1900. THE TROUBLES IN CHINA.

To jinunolc I hi' u/ use of Relitjioii and Jitatim by the ways "/' Tn/th ami Peace.' 1 Li;o XIII to the N.Z. TABLET.

fX some matters history b.ib an awkward habit of repeating itself in China. So much is to be tjw** v looked for in the land of ancestor-worship, castjF~^J iron tradition, and almost changeless social \jsJp(( customs — a land in which, in the early days of <3fJw< ihe Manchu Tartar dynasty.it took a savage $T^v^ Jaw savagely administered, plentiful head-drop- *^ ping' ar >d the imminent risk of a general revolution, to substitute the now loved but then hated pigtail for the older Chinese fashion of long and flowing tresses. In an especial manner has history repeated itself with melancholy monotony in regard to the succession of flickering sunshine and deep shadows which have fallen on missionary work among the races that inhabit the vast Celestial Empire. It is here a case of constancy in inconstancy — a weary succession of friendly pat and hostile cuff, of easy tolerance and fierce and savage persecution with refinements of exquisite torture which recall the scenes that took place in olden days around Indian camp-tires after the capture of prisoners of Avar. A little over two years ago — on March 15, 1898 — the Emperor of China signed a decree which was ' to render the protection of Christians easier ' and to deliver them completely from the local and partial persecutions that were of such frequent occurrence. It likewise granted official recognition and official status to the Catholic clergy : it made bishops equal in rank to viceroys and governors, entitled vicars-general and archpriests to audiences with treasurers and judges, and accorded to other priests the right to have audiences with prefects. And now the traditional reaction has set in with a rush. The ' Boxers,' otherwise the Society of the Big Sword — one of the dark-lantern associations with

which China is honeycombed — hnvc raised the usual cry for the expulsion or death of the im-luray-tep (the European devil). Over a great area around the Gulf of Pe-ehi-li, churches, convents, etc., are bein<r plundered and destroyed ; white people and native Christians — these latter arc descrioed by the ' Boxers ' as " worse than Europeans ' — are being tortured and put to death ; and the dowager-empress — the power that rules the throne — is said to be heart, and soul in sympathy with the anti-foreign movement. As usual. Catholics, being the most numerous body of t hnstians, and many of them far removed from ready assistance, are the heaviest losers both in property and life ; and present indications point to a probable recurrence of the fierce massacre which smote the Western world with grief and horror in 1870 and has left an odor of blood in the name of Tientsin. • • • This> constancy in change of mood lias pursued Christian missions in the Hwa-Kvvo or Flowery Kingdom through three centuries — like the irregularly recurrent falling and flooding of its Yellow River — and made their story one of the most pathetic and thrilling in the annals of Christianity. The Jesuit Fathers were the first who succeeded in introducing the Faith into China. It was the great desire of St. Francis Xavieii in his closing year* to spread the light of the Gospel in China, but he died on the isle of Sancian, while endeavoring to reach its shores, in 1552. '1 he pioneer missionary of the Flowery Land was Father Michael Roger. He landed in China — then a forbidden land for the white foreigner — in 1801, and preached quietly, but with some measure of success. Others followed him in this new and difficult mission-field. Some of them were beheaded in 1615. But when the headsman's heavy sword set their spirits free they had left a church and a congregation of native converts at Kei-fung-fu, on the Yellow River. From 1581 till the dawn of the seventeenth century the work of evangelisation dragged slowly and painfully alon<. r . The pace mended somewhat after IGO2. In that year Father Ricci made his way to Pekin, and with his mathematical knowledge and his astronomical instruments won the goodwill of the Kmperor ; 'for then, as now,' says the French author of Chum mul lln ('lit/if^, 'the hea\enly bodies were studied wi'li intense eamrne&s in the Celestial Empire, and many otlicus of N.ite were specially told off to report on everything connected with them.' ' The favor,' says an English author, 'extended by the emperor to Father Rirci on account of his scientific acquirements contributed more or less to the spread and protection of Christianity,' He toiled on the Chinese mission for 27 years, and at Ins death in 1(110 lie left behind him a multitude of convents and no fewer than .)()(» churches — one of these within the sacred walls of the < ipital, I'ekin. He was succeeded by other distinguished sons of St. li.v w n s,~ such as Fatheis SciiAAii, Vi;Hi!ir.s,r, Bnivr.r, (ii.iiniLLox, etc. Their scientific knowledge won, at lirst, respect lor them, and, later on, a measure of toleration for their Chinese converts. In the days when the vsise Sjiun-Chee — the first of the Tartar dynast} — was the Hwang-ti or 4 august ruler' of China — from 16 1 1 to 160:' — Father Vehhikst held an important astronomical appointment, and Father Schaai/ji wisdom and talent for administration were so highly appreciated that he was nii.de Chief Minister of State and actual ruler of the Chinese Empire. Tiiih was the Augustan era o*f the Catholic missions m the Land of Flowers, and a year after the death of the good Shux-Chk (in l(H»;i) the native converts to the faith arc paid to have numbered some :>OO,OOO. In the neighboring nation, Japan, there were, in the same year, about 750,000 native Christians, most of them won to truth by the zeal and p'cachinu, of the spiritual SOnS Of St. LrXATIIS. A brake was clapped on the wheel of missionaiy progress in China in the reign of the second Tartar emperor, Kano-Hi, who came to the throne at the age of eight years. ll is reign opened with high promise. He hung, so to speak, on the lips of Father Yi.iusiest, applied himself vigorously to the study of geometry and kindred sciences, advanced day by day in knowledge, and in after years won distinction as an essayist, translator, and lexicographer. In his China and Ike C/n'/ic*<; Edmund Plauciiut says of him :—: —

It was during his reign that the Jesuit missionaries, Bouvet, Reuik, Fartoux, Fridelli, Cakdoso, and others, made their celebrated survey of the whole of China on trigonometrical principles, which is still looked upon aa absolutely correct by geographer*, and there is little doubt that, had the gifted young emperor been left entirely under the guidance of these enlightened Fathers, they would, through the door opened by Bcienoe, have introluced Christianity, or rather their form of Christianity, throughout the entire Empire. But this was not to be. Two adverse circumstances combined to bliuht the erood work at the moment of its highest promise. The first was the intrigues of the antiforeign party— the court ' Boxers ' of the time. The other was the political outcome of the disputes between the Jesuit and the Dom i nican missionaries regarding the lawfulness of certain Chinese ceremonies. The first-mentioned difficulty arose during the minority of Kang-Hi, the youthful Tien-tse or ' Son of Heaven.' The four ministers or joint regents appointed to govern the country raised the now familiar cry against 'the European devil*,' inveighed against the influence of the pale-faced foreigners, and did what lay in their power to compel converts to return to the oldestablished customs of paganism. Their efforts received indirect aid from the differences between the Jesuits and the Dominicans. These latter — who had come to the country in IGoS — objected to certain ancient customs and ceremonies which the -Jesuit Fatheis tolerated in their new converts — certain marks of homage to the dead in general and to the Chinese philosopher Confucius in particular. Father Morales, O.S 1)., and his conftereb — and subsequently the Lazarist missionaries — regarded these 'Chinese rites ' a c of a religious nature, and pigan and superstitious. The Jesuits looked upon them as merely civil or political customs, which could not be omitted without grave loss to the Chinese Christians, and a long-drawn controversy arose which spread from China to Europe. The Emperor favored the contention of the Jesuits, and in 1602 issued an edict publicly according them the right to preach and granting his subjects full liberty to embrace the Catholic faith. The dispute about ' Chinese usages ' was subjected to a careful examination by the foremost theologians in Rome, and the patriarch of Antioch was sent to China as Apostolic Legate in 170^3 to inquire into the matter. He denounced the native rites as unfit for Clnistians to use, and, after long and careful investigation, they were fully and finally condemned by Pope Clkment XL in 17i.">. The decis on of the Papal Legate greatly enraged Kang Hi. The result is recorded in the following words by Plauchut : 'An imperial edict was issued in 1706, ordering the expulsion of all missionaries without distiction of sect; the Christian churches were desecrated and destroyed, and all natives who had embraced the new doctrine were persecuted with the utmost severity, fined, imprisoned, and in some cases pat to death.' The persecution continued with unabated fury in the reign of l\AMr Hi's son, Yrxo-T-CHiM., who succeeded him iv 1622, and in that of his grandson, Kiax-Lunu. Of this latter a recent writer says :—: — Ki\n-Li x». was a man of singular character. Political and personal motives prevented him from embracing Christianity, but he respected and loved the Jesuit Fathers, whom he drew to hii court at Pekin, and was especially gratified by the skill with which they ministered to his scientific and artistic tastes. Father Bexoist constructed a fountain to please him ; other Jesuits made wonderful clocks and automata, or prepared charts, or painted the halls of his palace. Yet he was afraid of allowing Christianity to become powerful in the Empire, leat it should open the door to an ascendency on the part of some European nation, similar to what was taking place before his eyes in India. While, therefore, the Jesuits at Pekin were safe and honored, the Christian communities in many provinces wire cruelly persecuted. The favor shown to the Jesuit missionaries lor a time at the Court of Fekin did not save them in the provinces. In 17 Ih eight of them were slaughtered at Nankin. The Society was suspended by Clement XIV. in 177 a. In the following year the evil news reached Pekin. But Fathers Amiot, Ciisot, Dollieres, and others, although grieved to their inmost souls at the ruin of their beloved Society, clung bravely to their noble work in China till death beckoned them away. Fattier Amiot died in 1794. He lived to hear of the great French Revolution, which, says a writer on the subject, ' paralysed the missionary energy of the chief Catholic nation for years.' The last half century has witnessed a vigorous revival of Catholic missionary effort in the Celestial Empire. Tt was found that the

descendants of many of the converts won to the Church by the Jesuit, Dominican, Lazarist, Franciscan, and other missionaries had clung with pathetic fidelity to the faith through generations of persecution. According to the official Gerarchut CattoUca for 1898 the Catholic Church in China has 38 vicariates and two prefectures, and 620 European and 137 native priests. The SLdi.^na^s Yci Booh estimates thp (Vholio population of China at ' probably about a million,' and the Protestants at 50,000. Bishop Kbynaui) (Vicar-Apostoliu of Chu-kiuiig), in his Unr axfrr Chine, estimates the Protestant population at 60,000, ' divided among the three branches of the Episcopal Church, nine sects of Presbyterians, six sects of Methodists, two sects of Baptists, and some others less known.' All of these are, with their Catholic fellowChristians, now involved in the universal danger created by the ' Boxer ' and anti-foreign fury that seems to be spreading in widening circles from the pro\ince of Shan-tun<r.