229

exception of Hunan. In 1860 there were thirty-five mission

230

stations in fourteen different residential centers. Most of these latter were cities. Two-thirds of the stations were in the five ports opened by the treaties of 1842-1844-Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo-and in Hongkong and Swatow." Between 1861 and 1880 inclusive sixty-five new residential centers were opened-usually in cities--and the number of mission stations (there were sometimes more than one in a city) increased to one hundred and thirty-two.' From 1881 to 1900 inclusive Protestant foreign missionaries established themselves in two hundred and seventy-seven additional centers and the number of mission stations increased from one hundred and thirty-two to four hundred and ninety-eight.'

231

232

This long chronicle of societies and these figures must of necessity be a somewhat dry catalogue of names, dates, and statistics. It must never be forgotten, however, that the few missionaries who have been mentioned at some length were only the most prominent and that by far the larger proportion of the achievement of. these years was due to hundreds of obscure men and women. Whatever may be one's opinions of the doctrines they taught, even a casual reading of their biographies cannot but bring the conviction that those who laid the foundations of the future Protestant churches did so usually with heroism and often at the sacrifice of comfort, health, and even life. If to a later age some of the beliefs of the pioneers seem antiquated and narrow, against these should be set the difficulties of learning a new language, the adjustment to unfamiliar and usually unsanitary living conditions, the long struggles with ill health, the inconvenience of travel in an alien land, and the frequent unfriendliness and hostility of the populace and officials.

Because the brief biographical notices of missionaries on the preceding pages have been almost exclusively of men, it must not be supposed that the latter predominated in Protestant missionary circles or that all the burden was borne by them. Fully halfby 1890 more than half—of the missionary force were women. 229 Ibid., p. 30.

230 The Christian Occupation of China, p. 286. These figures may not be entirely accurate.

231 Ibid., pp. 283-286. In 1876 there were ninety-one stations where missionaries resided and five hundred and eleven outstations.-Records of the General Conference of Protestant Missionaries, Shanghai, 1877, p. 486.

232 The Christian Occupation of China, pp. 283, 286.

234

Slightly more than half of these women were wives and so had much of their time consumed by the care of children and of the household. The majority of wives, however, were considered to be missionaries as truly as were their husbands. In addition to the influence of the Christian home-which in itself was no small factor in introducing influential ideals of conduct and family life "the wife often had a large share in the activities of the mission. Given the Chinese ideas of propriety, without her and her unmarried sisters the Church's approach to women and girls would have been much more difficult and at times impossible. All through the records of these years are stories, often preserved only in private letters and journals, of women who in addition to the strain of bearing and rearing children in a climate and amid sanitary conditions which were always trying and often fatal," maintained Christian homes and gave valiant assistance to their husbands in the Church. Equally heroic were hundreds of unmarried women who, by their voluntarily assumed .task denied the privileges of a home, devoted themselves unsparingly to furthering the Christian cause. Sometimes, indeed, they were its sole foreign representatives in inland cities and districts. Most of the British missionaries came from the middle class. Relatively few had a university training." For the most part, theirs was the education of the middle class physician or the nonconformist clergyman. By 1897 university-trained men had begun to arrive, but their numbers were still relatively small. Most of the Americans were from the farm and the small town. Usually the men were graduates of a denominational college and, if ordained, of a theological school. Both the British and the American missionaries were from stock which physically and mentally was sturdy and self-reliant. They were usually from earnestly religious families. Brought up in contact with secular society, their only formal vocational training being at most that

195.

235

233 One instance of this is in Ross, Mission Methods in Manchuria, pp. 193

284 The toll of disease, both for men and for women, was lessened by the beginning of the summer resorts which after 1900 were to play so large a part in missionary life. By 1897, for example, Kuliang, on a mountain ridge a few miles above Foochow, was offering relief from the heat of the valleys.-L. M. S. Chronicle, Vol. 6 (new series), p. 211.

135 In 1862, eight out of the ten men the Church Missionary Society then had in China were university men. In 1872, out of the new men who had come in the meantime, not one was a university graduate.-Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, Vol. 2, p. 579.

received in a medical school or in three years in a theological college, they were more nearly in touch with the non-ecclesiastical world than were Roman Catholic missionaries. Furloughs in their native lands, while not as frequent as in the years of easy transportation that succeeded 1900, came to most missionaries and helped to keep them familiar with the thought, religious and secular, of the Occident. Their outlook, then, tended to be broader than that of the Roman Catholic priest and it is not strange that they became interested not only in changing the religious and moral life of the Chinese but in altering the intellectual and social structure of the nation.

Protestant missionaries did not, as a rule, begin special preparation for their life in China until after reaching the country. Practically all of them studied the language, both written and spoken, and while many of them remained ignorant of the wider reaches of Chinese institutions, literature, and thought, and looked upon the culture around them with critical and unappreciative eyes, the majority who remained any length of time came to know intimately the life of the city or district in which they resided, and some of them made themselves experts in special phases of Chinese civilization and became ardent admirers of the best features of their adopted home.***

236

238

237

The major mission boards had rigorous requirements of character, purpose, and ability, and in intellectual vigor and training

236 As an example of this see some (not all) of the comments in Records of the Missionary Conference, Shanghai, 1890, pp. 609-660.

237 The length of service of Protestant missionaries in China cannot be determined, but in one mission in South China the time spent by fifty-one missionaries on the field varied from half a year to thirty-nine years and the average was seventyeight months. Ashmore, The South China Mission of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

Wylie, in Memorials of Protestant Missionaries in China, pp. iii, v, says that the average length of residence in China of the three hundred and thirty-eight missionaries who up to that time (1867) had served there was seven and a half years, that of those not then on the field being seven and a quarter years.

238 A. E. Moule, of the Church Missionary Society, in 1872 was urging missionaries to acquire a more intimate knowledge of Chinese customs and literature and to have a more sympathetic attitude toward them.-Chinese Recorder, Vol. 5, p. 41. Timothy Richard, noted for his warm appreciation of the best in Chinese life and thought, was in 1880 urging that examinations be held for the newer missionaries to guide them in their study of Chinese culture and life.Chinese Recorder, Vol. 11, p. 293. In 1870 the study of the Chinese Classics was urged by a speaker at the annual meeting of the North China Mission of the American Board.-Chinese Recorder, Vol. 3, p. 55. John Ross of Manchuria was in 1887 urging that Confucianism could be made a valuable help to Christianity.— Chinese Recorder, Vol. 18. This attitude, however, was not by any means universal.

the missionary was above the average of the class from which he came. His occupation called out whatever ability was in him. The demands on him were many and varied. He was usually preacher, teacher, physician, administrator, architect, and builder, 39 and could scarcely avoid growing if he kept pace with his task. The missionary body was not without its bigots and fanatics,' but as a rule Protestantism was giving to China of its choicest sons and daughters.

240

Between the missionary and his fellow countrymen in business and government service a great gulf was usually fixed. Some on both sides succeeded in crossing it, but as a rule the foreign merchants and consuls were severely critical of the missionary and his work, while the missionary looked with thorough disapproval upon the life led by the average non-missionary foreigner. This was unfortunate, but it is not surprising. Most of the foreign community had no sympathy with the missionary's purpose, often thought of him as hampering trade by stirring up riots, and regarded the entire group as fanatical and narrow. For many of the non-missionary body the Ten Commandments did not extend to China and morals were accordingly easy. The missionary, usually with the Puritan's standard of conduct, could not but disapprove. Some social intercourse there was, and among the merchants and consuls were men deeply and sympathetically interested in missions. As a rule, however, in each port the foreigners were in two reciprocally suspicious camps.

241

242

COÖPERATION AMONG PROTESTANT MISSIONS

A natural inference from the entrance of so large a number of denominations and societies into China would be that serious overlapping of effort followed-an evil which might have been avoided by a unified church. That some unnecessary repetition

239 See a description in Leuschner, Aus dem Leben und der Arbeit eines ChinaMissionars, passim.

240 See in the Missionary Magazine (American Baptist Missionary Union), Vol. 37 (1857), pp. 33-38, an article by Edw. A. Stevens called "The Heathen Justly Condemned." This was by a missionary to Burma and not to China, but seems to have met with enough acceptance by his constituency in America to be published in its magazine. For a contrary view see Richard, Conversion by the Million and Martin's paper in Records of the Shanghai Conference, 1890, pp. 619-631.

241 As an example see Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others, and Lin Shaoyang (a foreigner writing under a Chinese name), A Chinese Appeal to Christendom Concerning Christian Missions.

242

P. 517.

See a plea for breaking down this barrier in the Chinese Recorder, Vol. 27,

and unfortunate competition and dissension resulted is certain, and it is probable, too, that at times the multiplicity of sects wrought confusion in the Chinese mind. However, these defects can easily be exaggerated. They were, indeed, very little in evidence. To be sure, in each of the chief treaty ports and the larger cities several societies were usually represented.*** On the other hand, in at least the pioneer years, the great centers of population afforded ample scope for all the effort of all the missionaries and we have no evidence that any city was overchurched. Outside the main cities, moreover, as a rule only one society was represented in a district or town. Usually each mission kept out of territory previously occupied by another.""" Moreover, as before 1856, most Protestant missionaries were the spiritual children of the movements which traced their origin to Pietism and to the Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century. They thought of themselves as "Evangelical" Christians and were generally agreed as to what constituted the essentials of the Christian faith. With some important exceptions, a common terminology for Christian doctrines was employed, and, although each denomination had its own Chinese name, Protestants were often known by one generic title. Vigorous and sometimes acrimonious controversies were waged, as, for example, those over the proper Chinese words for baptism and God. The divisions over these issues were, however, by no means always by denominational lines, but were sometimes quite as marked within societies and missions as between them. Within Protestant ranks no controversy approached

243 In 1882 there were represented in Peking, for example, the London Missionary Society, the American Board, the (American) Northern Methodists, the (American) Northern Presbyterians, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.-L. M. S. Chronicle, Vol. 40 (1882), p. 99.

In the southern part of Fukien, the London Missionary Society, the Reformed Church in America, and the English Presbyterians agreed to a division of the field. A Century of Protestant Missions in China, p. 367.

The Committee on Comity of the Shanghai Conference of 1890 recommended that as a rule only the large cities should be open to one or more missions, that societies wishing to begin new work or extend that already begun take into consideration unoccupied territory, "so as speedily to cover the whole field," that in case of disagreement as to territory arbitration be resorted to, that applicants for baptism in one church be not received as candidates in another, that the acts of discipline of the various churches be respected, that the right of every church member to transfer his membership to another denomination be recognized but that caution be recommended in dealing with such cases, and that no members of other churches be taken into mission employ without consulting the missionary in charge. -Records of the General Conference of Protestant Missionaries held at Shanghai, May 7-20, 1890, pp. xlix and 1. These suggestions may indicate some of the evils which it was found advisable to remedy. There was no body to enforce them and only public opinion could see that they were conformed to.