Rising churches in non-Christian lands; lectures delivered on the College of missions lectureship, Indianapolis; the Severance lectureship, Western theological seminary, Pittsburgh

Front matter

Arthur J. Brown

EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface xi

I The People among Whom the Churches are Rising i

Preface

The rise of Christian Churches in non-Christian lands is the most inspiring fact of the present age, but the problems to which it gives rise are among the most difficult that the Christian student has to solve. They vitally affect the conditions under which mission work must now be conducted and involve extensive readjustments in our attitude and methods. We of the West should carefully study these rising Churches in order that we may aid them effectively, guide them wisely, avoid harmful policies, and cooperate harmoniously with them as they develop independent power. Available material for this study is limited, as the problem has recently emerged. During the pioneer period, when converts were few in number, widely scattered, and with no leaders of their own, the problems of the Church were comparatively simple. Now, by the blessing of God upon missionary work, numerous churches have been developed. Christians of the second and third generations represent increasing stability. Capable leaders are appearing, and others are being trained in mission schools. The churches are becoming conscious of unity and power.

To what extent do our methods recognize these facts? What is the character of our fellow Christian in those lands, and what are his temptations and difficulties? Where the independence of the churches

xi xii PREFACE

should be recognized, what should be our relation to it? What progress are they making in self-support? To what extent do they realize their responsibility to propagate the gospel among their countrymen and to promote the kingdom of God by social service? How r can the people of God in the home lands most effectively cooperate with their brethren in non-Christian lands for the furtherance of the gospel of our common Lord? These are some of the questions which call for our thoughtful and prayerful consideration, and whose reflex influence upon the churches in Europe and x\merica will be far-reaching.

President James G. K. McClure, of Chicago, on hearing that this volume was in preparation, wrote: "I want you to know that I realize the tremendousness of your task, that you are breaking a path into the midst of the greatest problems Christianity has ever faced and that I am eager you should state things in a large way — in the same generous, encouraging, developing, welcoming way that Christ would use in dealing with the people and communities that are involved." I dare not cherish the hope that I have succeeded in meeting this high test. I write, not as a teacher, but rather as a student who deeply feels the importance of the subject and who ventures to indicate some aspects of a problem which still is far from adequate interpretation.

The proposed use of this volume as a text-book for mission study classes has limited its length and shortened the reference to some phases of the subject which,

PREFACE xiii

while important to ecclesiastical scholars and missionary administrators, are not of general interest.

Arthur Judson Brown

156 Fifth Avenue, New York April 16, 1915

THE PEOPLES AMONG WHOM THE CHURCHES ARE RISING

Power for the New Life

An Unnoticed Movement. The most significant movement in non-Christian lands is attracting scant attention from a preoccupied world. Politicians and generals, poets and scientists, the devotees of fashion and amusement, give little heed to the small groups of Asiatics and Africans who worship the crucified Nazarene. "No more did the statesmen and the philosophers of Rome understand the character and issues of that greatest movement of all history, of which their literature takes so little notice. That the greatest religious change in the history of mankind should have taken place under the eyes of a brilliant galaxy of philosophers and historians, and that they should have treated as simply contemptible an agency which all men must now admit to have been, for good or evil, the most powerful moral lever that has ever been applied to the affairs of men, are facts well worthy of meditation in every period of religious transition." *

This movement is being reproduced in our day in lands of which the early disciples had never heard. Hujnble but earnest men and women are hearing the

*Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. I, 359.

x good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people. The scenes so graphically described in the New Testament are being reenacted on a wider scale throughout the mission field of the twentieth century.

Non-Christian Peoples Misjudged. Our first interest naturally centers upon the peoples of the non-Christian world who form the material from which the membership of the Church is to be fashioned. Is that material capable of transformation by the gospel? Wrong ideas on the subject were almost universal until recent years, many even in the home churches holding that "the heathen" were not undeveloped races but "the rotten product of decayed civilizations" with which nothing worth while could be done. Juster ideas are beginning to prevail; but multitudes in America still have a subconscious feeling that missionary work is a condescension to lower orders of humanity. This feeling has been strengthened by superficial travelers who judge by western standards and condemn peoples who fall short.

But let us be reasonable. How can we expect men of non-Christian races to be honest and humane under conditions which have long fostered dishonesty and inhumanity, to be chaste when unchastity is sanctioned by general custom, and to exemplify Christian character without Christian knowledge? It is hard enough for us to keep straight with the help of all the incentives of Christian teaching and association. When we consider the absence of these incentives in non-Christian lands, the wonder is that people show as good qualities as they do. It took Anglo-Saxons many centuries under the tutelage of Christianity to reach their present stage, and they are still far from perfect. Shall we condemn non-Christians because they have not acquired in less than a century without such tutelage w r hat we but imperfectly exemplify?

Our Barbaric Forebears. It is easy to criticize people who differ from us, forgetting that the differences may be largely due to the lack of advantages which we have had and which we can communicate to them. Pessimistic prophecies are based upon past conditions and fail to take into account the regenerating forces which Christianity is now bringing into play. The qualities that have given preeminence to the white man did not characterize him when he was found by the missionaries. of the early Church. They have been bred into him by centuries of Christian teaching. Most of the non-Christian nations are considerably higher in the scale of civilization and achievement than Europe was in the days of St. Paul. The Teuton in the time of Julius Caesar was far more barbarous than the Chinese and the East Indian of to-day. Augustine of Canterbury found no such orderly society in England as Morrison found in China. As late as 1678 the Highlanders of Scotland were "a barbarous, savage people accustomed to rapine and spoil." * Boniface labored in Germany among more lawless tribes than Carey met in India. Patrick preached in Ireland when the Irish were as savage as the present Kurds of the

Quoted in Henderson and Watt, Scotland of To-day, 16.

Turkish mountains. "Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged." * Christianity may do as much for other races as it has done for ours. There are excellent qualities in the people of every field.

If we may adapt the words of Carlyle in his Essay on Burns : "Wherever there is a sky above and a world around, ... is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwarted, everrenewed endeavors; its unspeakable aspirations; its fears and hopes that wander through eternity. . . . The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. ... A Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives till Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a man's life and therefore significant to men."

Uplifting Forces Required. Many think of non- Christian peoples as a mass, as they would think of vast herds of cattle or shoals of fish. Why not think of them as individuals, as men of like passions with ourselves? A human being who has never heard of Christ is after all a human being. He has the same hopes and fears, the same temptations and sorrows, the same capacity for happiness. Are we not told that God "hath made of one every nation of men"? We complacently imagine that we are a higher order of

^sa. li. i.

beings. But what constitutes superiority of race? Benjamin Kidd declares that "we shall have to set aside many of our old ideas on the subject. Neither in respect alone of color, nor of descent, nor even of the possession of high intellectual capacity, can science give us any warrant for speaking of one race as superior to another.' ' High character is the result, not so much of anything inherent in one race as distinguished from another, as of the operation upon a race of certain uplifting forces. Any preeminence that we now possess is due to the action of these forces. But they can be brought to bear upon other races as well as upon us. We should avoid the popular mistake of looking at men of different races "as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face." *

We need in this study a true idea of the worth and dignity of man as man, a realization that under brown, black, and yellow skins are all the faculties and possibilities of human souls, to grasp the great thought that these are our brother men, made like ourselves in the image of God. Let us have the charity that sees beneath external peculiarities our common humanity, which leads us to respect a man because he is a man; ■which, no matter what his complexion or country, no matter to what degradation he has fallen, will take him by the hand and lead him to a higher plane. We need an enthusiasm for humanity which shall not be sentimental rhetoric, but a catholic love for one who is

George Eliot.

"Heir of the same inheritance, Child of the self-same God; He hath but stumbled in the path We have in weakness trod."

Ruskin reminds us that the filthy mud in the street is composed of clay, sand, soot, and water; that the clay may be purified into the radiance of the sapphire ; that the sand may be developed into the beauty of the opal; that the soot may be crystallized into the glory of the diamond, and that the water may be changed into a star of snow. So man in Asia as well as in America may, by the transforming power of the Spirit of God, be ennobled into the dignity of divine sonship. We shall get along best with the non-Christian if we remember that he is not a different species and that he differs from us, not in the fundamental things that make for manhood, but only in the superficial things that are the result of environment. From this view-point, we can say with Shakespeare:

"There is some sort of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out."

A Discarded Word. I put the word "heathen" in quotation marks because I think it should be abandoned; not because its original meaning is less true, but because popular usage has added an element of contempt which has made it not only inappropriate but highly offensive to intelligent Asiatics, and therefore a hindrance to our Christian approach to them. Those who still cling to the contemptuous idea may profitably recall that when the misanthropic Scrooge, in

Dickens's Christmas Carol, says of the poor and suffering: "If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population/' the Ghost sternly replies : "Man, if man you be at heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is, Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are the most worthless, and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child."

Typical Peoples

Chinese. Consider some of the typical peoples of the non-Christian world. The Chinese will probably be deemed the most conspicuous example. I need not repeat here what I have written regarding them in two other books. 1 Their industry, their persistence, their genius for scholarship and business, and the remarkable skill and energy with which they carried through a gigantic political revolution have challenged the respect of mankind. They are coming to the front in many lines of activity. Chinese students take high honors in our proudest American universities. Sir David Barbour of Great Britain, at a monetary conference of world experts on finance, declared that "the representative of China in this conference, Dr. Chen, is distinctively a younger man than any of us, but when it comes to ability or knowledge of the subject, he is the peer of us all."

The Hon. John W. Foster, formerly American

x New Forces in Old China and The Chinese Revolution.

Secretary of State, expresses the opinion, in his Introduction to the Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, that the last one hundred years have produced many men of scholarship, several great generals, a number of statesmen of distinguished ability and success, and a few diplomats of high rank; but that no one of these can be singled out as having combined in his person all these attainments in such an eminent degree as Li Hung-chang. His successor in the Vice-royalty of Chihli and now the President of the Republic, Yuan Shih-kai, is everywhere conceded to be one of the most masterful men of the present world generation — a born leader of men.

Japanese. The Japanese were regarded fifty years ago as an obscure and weak "heathen" nation. They certainly are not obscure to-day, and if one regards them as weak he can secure some heartfelt information by inquiring of Russians. I need not enlarge upon the characteristics of a people that are probably better known to western nations than any other of the peoples of the non-Christian world. We all recognize their progressive spirit, their civil and military efficiency, the marvelous skill with which they are adapting themselves to the conditions of the new era, passing, almost in a single generation, from the period of antiquity to the period of modern life. Vices they undoubtedly have ; so have we ; but they are a virile, energetic, and ambitious people, a recognized power in the far East, and a factor in international relationships which is not ignored in the cabinets of Europe and America.

East Indians. Are the peoples of India uncivilized ? India had a voluminous written literature and had studied the heavens accurately enough to calculate the solar year 2,000 B. C. : had worked out a science of mathematics, a scheme of philosophy, and an art of music with its seven notes 500 B. C. ; and had written a Sanskrit grammar, still used by scholars, 350 B. C. When America was a wilderness and the Pilgrim Fathers were beginning their struggle to subdue it, the Emperor Shah-Jehan (reigned 1628-1658) built the magnificent Palace-Fort at Delhi with its wonderful Pearl Mosque and its Audience Hall with the Peacock Throne, adorned with emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamonds which the jeweler Tavernier valued at $35,- 000,000; and when his favorite wife died, he toiled seventeen years with twenty thousand workmen at a cost of ten million dollars to build her tomb, a tomb before which the artists and architects of the twentieth century stand in wonder, delight, and awe, a dream in marble and precious stones, the most beautiful structure the world has ever seen— the glorious Taj Mahal. That the East Indians of the twentieth century are not degenerate descendants of nobler days many a missionary and British civil service administrator can testify. There are thousands of intelligent, cultivated gentlemen in India. Schools and universities are crowded with bright pupils, and the Nobel Prize for Literature for 19 13 was bestowed upon Rabindranath Tagore, a Hindu poet of Bengal.

Of the lower classes Sir Andrew H. L. Fraser, who spent a generation in India, writes: "It is not difficult to win the hearts of these kindly, simple people: they have a wonderful way of winning ours. It is worth while to get among them and help them to mitigate their sorrows or increase their happiness. . . • To me it was always a touching spectacle to see a band of pilgrims on their way to Jaganath's temple at Puri. They were going to fulfil some vow, to give thanks for some special blessing. They would come sometimes, nearly a whole village together, for hundreds of miles with their bullocks and carts and their families and go singing down the road the praises of their god. They had looked forward to this pious journey for years and expected much blessing from it. Often they would return weary and well-nigh stripped of all they had by the rapacious priests and temple servants. Often some of them fell victims to cholera and other ills incident to pilgrim life in India. Sometimes they had not even obtained a satisfactory view of the strangely unlovely idol they had gone to see. But they were going back to their old life, loyal and patient as ever, not understanding why things had not been made brighter for them, but not complaining. In much of their life we cannot help these people; but we can at least sympathize with them, and we can hardly help loving them when we know them well." *

Koreans. The Koreans appear, at first glance, to be most unpromising material. They lack the energy, initiative, and ambition of the Japanese, and the

1 Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, 182, 183.

thrift, industry, and strength of the Chinese. The visitor usually enters from Japan, and the contrast is painful. The villages are a squalid collection of mushroom hovels. The streets are crooked alleys and choked with filth, except where the Japanese have enforced a semblance of cleanliness. Some travelers have accepted this first impression as final.

Two visits to Korea and long relationship to missionary work there have given me a different opinion. The upper classes are as a rule degenerate, but the common people are robust. Their courage is high, as they have repeatedly shown, though lack of organization, competent leadership, and the weapons and methods of modern warfare make them helpless as a nation. Mentally they develop quickly under education. Korean children are remarkably bright scholars.

During a journey through the interior we passed through scores of villages far from the beaten track of travel, ate in native huts and slept in native inns, with our luggage piled in the open courtyard. The people were inquisitive, following us through the streets, crowding about us at every stop, and peering through every door and crevice. But not once was insolence shown, and not a penny's worth was stolen. Everywhere we were treated respectfully and with genuine hospitality. The best that a village afforded was placed at our disposal, and, while prices were never excessive, the people often refused to receive any payment. We usually sent word ahead, so that accommodations might be ready for us ; and whenever we did so, groups would walk out several miles to meet us, sometimes in a heavy rain. The customary salutation was a smiling inquiry : "Have you come in peace?" and when we left, the people escorted us some distance on our way, and then courteously bade us good-by in the words : "May you go in peace!" These were usually Christians, but we saw multitudes who were not, and while they were more unkempt than the Christians, they, too, were invariably kind and respectful. He must be a callous man who could not love such a people and long to help them to higher levels of thought and life.

Siamese. The Siamese are not deemed one of the strong peoples of Asia, but Siamese students abroad have no difficulty in maintaining equality with foreigners in the classroom. When they first went to the famous Harrow School in England, the head master said to Mr. Verney : "You are trying an extraordinary experiment in sending young Siamese to Harrow, and you are wonderfully sanguine in supposing that they can adapt themselves to our public school life;" but shortly before his death, he spoke of the remarkable success they had achieved and said that there was not a master at Harrow who would not gladly welcome them to his house.

Turks. The Turks are often spoken of as the least responsive of all the peoples to the influences that make for character. But whatever corruption there may be among the official and wealthy classes, the Turkish peasant is a brave, hardy man, and, though he may be roused to fanatical fury, he is ordinarily peaceable.

industrious, and hospitable. Children of upper and lower classes alike, when trained in mission schools, often develop wonderfully. The Rev. Charles R. Watson says that he met "a figure in Turkish costume, which covers the entire head and face and comes down just over the shoulders — a thick impenetrable veil. . . . The exclamation is forced to one's lips : 'Here is the unchangeable Orient with its stamp of degradation upon womanhood !' Then we step into a mission building. The missionary introduces us to this young woman. She throws back her veil. What do we see? Beautiful brown eyes! Beautiful tresses of brown hair! A voice that is clear and musical. She is the author of several books; and in the recent war she gathered a few women of kindred spirit about her and went to the front to minister to the sick and wounded. She may not call herself a Christian, but you would not call her a Moslem. She has attended the American Girls' College at Constantinople, and the spirit of Christianity has been breathed into her soul. One goes his way after such an experience wondering whether beneath other impenetrable veils there may not be others like Halideh Hanem."

Filipinos. A visit to the Philippines impressed me with the attractiveness of the Filipinos. Among delightful memories are receptions at Iloilo, Dumaguete, and Manila, where hundreds of well-dressed, pleasantfaced people welcomed us with a grace far removed from barbarism. A Filipino residence in which a social function was held had spacious drawing-rooms, lofty ceilings, and rich furniture. The top of the dining-room table was a single slab of beautiful marble, six feet in width and twenty-two feet in length. The floors were of polished native woods, and the doors and other woodwork were of solid mahogany. The wild tribes of the interior mountains are indeed savages. Some of them are head-hunters, and all are considerably lower in the scale of civilization than the people in the larger towns and along the coast. But the Hon. Dean C. Worcester assured me that they are responsive to kindness, and that, ignorant and degraded as they are, they might be raised by wise and patient effort to a much higher level of life. Let us give them a chance, some decades of fair treatment, of just laws, of modern political and educational methods, and of a pure Protestant faith, and I believe that they will justify the hopes of their well-wishers rather than the sneers of their detractors. Said Senor Felipe Buencamino: 'The heart of the Filipino is like his fertile soil, and it will as surely repay cultivation. Sow love and you will reap love. Sow hatred and hatred will grow/'

Africans. Africans are considered as types of the lowest races. But the Rev. George L. Mackay, of Formosa, told a Canadian audience that, "after having gone around the globe once and being now half way round again, I declare that some of the best men I ever met were black-faced, thick-lipped, and w r oollyheaded Negroes." Of the raw tribes of the west coast Miss Mary Kingsley wrote, after careful observation :

"These Africans have often a remarkable mental acuteness and a large share of common sense. I confess I like the African on the whole, a thing I never expected to do when I went to the coast with the idea that he was a degraded, savage, cruel brute." * When a great congregation saw the body of David Livingstone laid to rest in historic Westminster Abbey, none in that distinguished throng were regarded with greater respect than the black men who had faithfully borne the sacred form on their shoulders through forests and rivers, across plains and over mountains, in toil and hunger and weariness, in danger of savage beasts and still more savage men, until they had delivered their sacred charge to their white brothers in England.

Burmans. Say the worst, if one will, about any people. The Burman, for example, is among the hardest of men to influence with the Christian message. He is haughty, cruel, fond of theatricals and gaudilycolored garments. He regards work as beneath him. His Buddhistic teaching against the taking of life does not trouble him in the least, for, he argues, he does not kill the fish he eats: they merely die when he takes them out of the water. He "dries" them on mats in the sun, pounds them to a paste, adds a little salt, drains off the oil, spreads the paste on his rice, and eats it with keen relish. We shall never forget the odor of those decaying fish. In spite of his laziness, his poverty, his shiftlessness, and the ease with which a handful of white men have defeated him in war and a few thou-

x Travels in West Africa, 439, 653.

sand Chinese have made themselves masters of his trade, he is One of the most self-satisfied of mortals, proudly regarding himself as superior to all other races. He smokes his cigaret, chews his betel, eats his "fragrant" fish, lounges in his bamboo hut, and is calmly indifferent to the rest of the world !

Let us be careful in our judgment, however. These people are not the only conceited ones on earth. There are some in America. Nor do we have to travel halfway around the world to find the indolent and the careless. Burmese women are notably strong and capable. They are not secluded like the women of India. They freely mingle with men and usually attend to the business matters of the family. Drunkenness and opium smoking among all classes are not so common as the former is in England and the latter in China ; but, unfortunately, both are increasing under the influence of the European in one case and the Chinese in the other. Most foreigners in Asia and Africa, outside of the missionary circle, drink heavily and the native soon learns to imitate them. The Burman has qualities which, when developed by the gospel, make him a strong man.

Elements of Hope

The Human Quality. Everywhere, even in the most unlooked-for places, one finds the human quality. I noticed a woman in an Asiatic hamlet. Her garments were cheap and coarse. Her hands were roughened by toil. Her features were heavy, her eyes dull. She was evidently a common, ignorant peasant. A sleeping baby beside her wakened and began to fret. The woman took the child in her arms and, indifferent to onlookers, gave the little one her breast. As the babe nestled against her bosom and contentedly began to nurse, the hard lines in the mother's face softened. The dull eyes grew softly bright. The countenence was suffused with tenderness. And lo! I saw the transfiguration of womanhood.

Our train stopped twenty minutes at an interior station in Japan. We strolled up and down the long platform. It ran beside and a little above a row of humble dwellings. The weather was warm and doors were open. It was evening, and the lighted interiors were clearly visible. A woman was preparing a simple meal. The husband and father, apparently a laborer, came wearily in from his daily toil. A child joyfully ran to meet him. He caught the little fellow in his arms, tossed him on his shoulder, crouched on the floor while the boy gleefully climbed upon his back — father and son laughing as they romped together, while the mother looked up from her work with joy and pride. It was plainly the home of poverty, but as plainly the home of affection and happiness. And we, who could not but see, thought of the dear ones far away and felt that we were kin to the Japanese toiler who loved his lowly home and ihis little child.

Christian Dynamic Needed. We would not give an exaggerated idea of non-Christian peoples. Multitudes are stolid and ignorant. The defects and vices which characterize parts of the populations of Europe and America characterize a far larger proportion of the populations of Asia and Africa. Lying, gambling, stealing, immorality, official corruption, although by no means universal, are so general as to form racial traits. Some professed Christians are not good men; but the normal expectation is that the average Christian is a man of personal purity and integrity, and if public opinion learns that he is not, it condemns him. Some Hindus, Buddhists, and Moslems are men of personal purity and integrity; but the normal expectation is that the average man of these faiths is not, and public opinion accepts this as a matter of course. The first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is still an accurate description of the vices of the non-Christian world.