188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever plausible such a theory may sound, forty years' experience 

 in San Francisco testifies to the contrary. A people of traditions, 

 the lives, work, and history of whose generations are and always 

 have been but a repetition of each other, they seem incapable of 

 change except in the acquisition of such mechanical skill and 

 knowledge as can be made subservient to their material advantage. 



The successful exclusion of further Chinese immigration, and 

 thereby the complete isolation of the Chinese who are among us 

 from their countrymen at home, will certainly offer a more favor- 

 able field for Christian missionary work than has heretofore ex- 

 isted. But that which has been accomplished thus far certainly 

 does not inspire confidence that much is to be gained in that di- 

 rection. Mr. Gibson, the most prominent of all missionary work- 

 ers among the Chinese in California, testified in 1876 to the effect 

 that, out of one hundred and fifty thousand Chinese in California, 

 but two hundred and seventy-one had, up to that date, been bap- 

 tized and received into Christian church communion. And he 

 failed entirely to note how many of these had fallen from grace, 

 and gone back to their original faith and practices. He failed 

 also to give the simple truth to the world that, for every " soul 

 so hopefully converted and saved " to use his own words thou- 

 sands of young men had been ruined by the presence of the Chi- 

 nese through the introduction and spread of the opium habit, the 

 dissemination of hereditary disease through their innumerable 

 dens of prostitution, the destructive influences of their lottery 

 and gambling dens, and the general demoralization of the field 

 of labor. 



Is there not something that always has and always will suc- 

 cessfully resist efforts at Christianization of the Chinese ? Let us 

 resort again to the testimony of that devout and earnest mission- 

 ary, the Abbe* Hue, than whom no one has ever written more 

 clearly and truthfully of the habits and characteristics of the 

 race : 



" In the five ports open to Europeans, religious liberty really 

 does exist, and it is protected by the presence of consuls and ships 

 of war. Yet the number of Christians does not increase more rap- 

 idly than in the interior of the empire. In Macao, Hong-Kong, 

 Manila, Singapore, Penang, Batavia, though they are under the 

 dominion of Europeans, the great mass of the population consists 

 of Chinese, who for the most part are permanently settled in these 

 cities, and hold in their hands the great interests of agriculture, 

 commerce, and industry. It is certainly not the fault of persecu- 

 tion of the European authorities that hinders them from embrac- 

 ing Christianity. Yet the conversions are not more numerous 

 than elsewhere. . . . 



" The Chinese are so completely absorbed in temporal interests, 



