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CHINA IN TRANSITION

CHAP. PAGE

RELIGIONS OF CHINA AND THE MISSIONARY

THE NEW AND THE OLD LEARNING

WILL RUSSIA BE REPRESENTED ON THE MISSION FIELD? . . . . . 329

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

CHINA IN TRANSITION

WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA?

For centuries China has been the land that never moved. It had a political history full of wars and bloodshed, of intrigue and murder; periods of prosperity and enlightenment; periods of darkness and desolation; but the country remained essentially the same country. There might be some small alteration in its customs, but China was distinctly unprogressive. And everybody who knew China ten or fifteen years ago was prepared to prophesy that it would continue to remain unprogressive.

Many a missionary speaks of the China that he used to know as a very different land from the China of to-day. It used to be a sort of Rip Van Winkle land that had slept a thousand years, and showed every sign of remaining asleep for another thousand. Mrs. Arnold Foster told us that when she first came to Wuchang she used to see the soldiers dressed mediaevally, learning to make faces to inspire terror in the hearts of the adversary. Monseigneur Jarlin, the head of the French mission in Peking, described the China of olden times by saying that in his young days all Chinamen had a rooted contempt for everything Western. Theirs was the only civilised land. The West was the land of barbarism. Now, he added, the positions are reversed; every Chinaman despises China, and is convinced that from the West comes the light of civilisation. Arch-deacon Moule tells how he sailed out to China in a sailing ship, and found a land absolutely indifferent to the existence of the West--more ignorant of the West than the West was of the East, and that, when he was young, was saying a great deal; and now he finds himself in a land that has telephones and motor cars and takes an active interest in flying machines.

China has fundamentally altered. She used to be absolutely the most conservative land in the world. Now she is a land which is seeing so many radical changes, that a missionary said, when I asked him a question about China, "You must not rely on me, for I left China three months ago, so that what I say may be out of date."

China is now progressive; yes, young China believes intensely in progress, with an optimistic spirit which reminds the onlooker more of the French pre-Revolution spirit than of anything else. And this intense belief in progress shows itself at every turn; the Yamen runner has become a policeman, towns are having the benefit of water-works, schools are being opened everywhere, railways cover the land. One may well ask what has accomplished this change, what has awakened China?

Perhaps, like many other great events in history, this change of opinion in China should be attributed to more than one cause. There are two chief causes. One may be small, but it is not insignificant; the other is certainly great and obvious. The less appreciated factor that is causing the regeneration of China is Christianity; the larger and more obvious factor is the new national movement.

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