2(38 



THE AMERICAX MUSEUM JOUEXAL 



what is that as against her thousands of 

 years? It is often said that an inter- 

 national commission should be consti- 

 tuted to govern China. I think an 

 international commission is indeed 

 needed: its function should be to de- 

 vise ways and means to let China alone. 



Tliere are two quickening forces for 

 China : Education, Eeligion. There 

 are no others. If tliese forces join 

 hands, regeneration will come irresist- 

 ibly, if we are patient and if we leave 

 the application to the Chinese. 



I have seen something of the mis- 

 sionary-work. I admire it and think 

 its results have been remarkable, yet 

 some of it does not strike bottom. You 

 cannot Christianize the Chinese or any 

 others independently of the everyday 

 needs of the people. This the mission- 

 aries have learned : to their evangeliza- 

 tion they have added schools, hospitals 

 and medical services, industrial educa- 

 tion. The strong medicine of evange- 

 lization must be accompanied by much 

 economic, social, and civic sanitation. 



It is estimated that eighty-five per 

 cent of the population of China is agri- 

 cultural. The missionary Avho can aid 

 the people in their farming will have a 

 double hold. Essentially the same need 

 exists in every missionary country. Tlie 

 agricadtural mission must be one of the 

 strong movements of the coming years. 



The fundamental situation in China 

 today is not its government, its social 

 institutions, or its commercial develop- 

 ment, but its agriculture. Those mil- 

 lions of people must be clothed, fed and 

 supported, and the scale of living must 

 certainly rise. The spirit in which all 

 this is accomplished will determine the 

 spirit of the people and their civiliza- 

 tion. China needs a vivid awakening 

 in her agriculture. I should beware of 

 any laid-down system of improvement. 

 I should prefer to teach. I wish that 

 some gifted far-seeing spirit, knowing 



the rural background of the race and 

 in touch with modern science and prac- 

 tice, could spend some years in China, 

 unattached to any mission, uncon- 

 nected with government, perhaps sup- 

 ported by an organization designed for 

 the purpose, and that he would analyze 

 the rural problem for the people, seeing 

 it from the outside, and present it to 

 them in a clear picture by tract and 

 speech, to the end that they might plan 

 ways to meet the situation, rising to it 

 as they see it. 



The Chinese are a people of broad 

 moralities, much given to ethical ad- 

 monition. They are guided by prov- 

 erbs and sayings. Their philosophy is 

 very different from that of the Occi- 

 dent, apparently lacking the Scriptural 

 postulate of the fall of man. "The na- 

 ture of man is good," saith the Teacher, 

 and this statement is repeated in the 

 schoolbooks. The admonitions develop 

 this natural goodness. Lacking the 

 effort to recover the original state of 

 sinlessness, the elements of contrition 

 and repentance, as understood in the 

 West, seem to be absent, with the theo- 

 logical conceptions of atonement and 

 redemption. This attitude largely ex- 

 plains much of the history of China, 

 taken in connection with its ancestorial- 

 ism. China has been chained to its 

 l)ast, much dominated by its family 

 histories. 



The civic value of repentance and re- 

 mission of sins lies in the fact that one 

 regrets the past and desires a new fu- 

 ture. It stimulates constant freedom 

 from oneself. So the worship of a liv- 

 ing God rather than the religious ven- 

 eration of an ancestral tree looks for- 

 ward and assimilates all that is new. 

 It is the forward look, as I am im- 

 pressed, that is needed in China, but I 

 trust it may be the racial outlook of 

 the Chinese rather than an imitation of 

 tlie West. 



