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Show - 18 - feeble, exotic and Chinese who joined it were often despised as weakly giving themselves to the service of the foreigner. But a change has taken place as the Church has increasingly worn the aspect of a Chinese institution, led and officered by Chinese, and by Chinese who in many conspicuous instances, immeasurably excel their fellow-countrymen of the old faith and scholarship, both in learning and in character. Strong men are coming to see, too, that Christianity is not something to be feared; that a Christian and a patriot are not irreconcilable in one person; and that a new meaning, a new content must be put into most, if not all, the institutions of Chinese life. Gradually they are coming to see that Christianity, transcending national ideals and interests, is to be realized not by destroying but by enlarging them. THE OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF THE YEAR'S WORK. One of the significant events of the year may be mentioned: the collapse of the attempt to make Confucianism the state religion of China. The agitation was strong but the opposition severe. Criticisms were passed upon Confucius by the younger and more educated non-Christian men more severe than anything Christians have said. Not that Confucius is held in disrepute by the people at large, for he is not. But to say that the Confucian system is prized as a real help and consolation would be misleading. On the other hand to say that Confucianism has been mainly traditional and formal in the past would scarcely be correct. But among the educated classes its ethical element is much more esteemed than the religious. Confucianism has given to China her moral standard, a negative moral restraint, but it has centered in ancestral worship, and "ancestral worship is filial piety gone mad." It has entailed upon the Chinese an enormous expenditure. It has congested the population about the ancestral homes, has led to early marriage and polygamy, has destroyed individual liberty, has put ancestors in the place of God, and bound China to the dead past. These things are openly acknowledged. The seeds of decay are in her past, and the one hope of China is the vitalizing principle of modern civilization-that is, in the religion that gave birth to that civilization. Christianity is slowly but steadily taking the place of Confucianism as the family religion of the Chinese, and this is the end we desire. Not that Christianity should ever be a state religion. That is to be avoided at any cost. But it needs to become naturalized, Sinocized, so that the people will feel at home in it, for only by becoming native has Christianity ever meant anything to any people. Flood, and famine conditions resulting, in certain sections of the field have again to be recorded, and until the next harvest season a great many people will have a hard struggle to keep soul and body together. A long-suffering and patient people as the Chinese are they have at length been aroused by the severity of this last flood to take some measures to prevent its further recurrence, whether effective or not remains for the summer to show. There is a sententious truth in the Chinese saying: "If medicine does not stir a commotion in the patient, it will not cure his disease. " The application lies on the surface. Some of our people suffered severely and have been reduced to comparative poverty. One is not surprised, therefore, that the income of the church for the past year has not been so high as usual. |
