REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 167 



ment, practising that "flexible inflexibility" of which Dr. Arthur 

 Smith has written, or, as they themselves would say, quoting Mencius, 

 "practising their chosen principles alone." ( JlTi ?T^?if£ )• These men 

 have the respect of their countrymen, and their opinions carry great 

 weight, both with the gentry and the common folk. Wherefore, it is 

 good that foreigners should know what views such are helping to form ; 

 and it is still better that as compared with even thirty or forty years 

 ago, their ideas are enlightened and tolerant. 



In this connection, it appears regrettable that the resume of 

 Christian doctrine, given as part of Chapter II of the original, has 

 not been translated. It contained, we are told, "nothing new to 

 foreign readers" ; but its omission leaves us ignorant of the degree of 

 knowledge of Christian beliefs shown by the compiler of the Kiao Ou 

 Ki Lio. Into the book as it stands, no article of the Creed except the 

 first has found its way ; the Cross, that great rallying point of all 

 Christendom, is only mentioned once, and then in a yamen-case about 

 a cross on a certain church, which a mob destroyed believing it to be 

 the cause of a prolonged drought. In reading the favourable edicts, 

 too, one tires of the phrase that "Christianity has for its end the 

 exhorting of mankind to good works" (J^^UfrAfT-H^TiO; and 

 yet, what great advances have been made ! 



We can only guess at the original Chinese opinion on the Nestoriaa 

 and Franciscan teachings and practice ; but we know their fate ; and 

 we know that as soon as Catholic Christian propaganda became too 

 successful, it was classed with the secret sects so abhorred by the 

 government, and was therefore attacked by the mandarinate. In 

 1622, the White Lily sect was confounded with Christianity, — a long- 

 lived error ; and even in 1818, the latter is mentioned in an Imperial 

 Edict along with the Red Yang, Silent Void, One Incense-stick and 

 Pure Tea Sects as secret institutions some of whose followers had 

 repented, and returned to their allegiance to the Government. Long 

 after this Christianity was still legislated against ; and much more 

 recently, if the mandarins did not believe like the vulgar in the 

 "medicine made by missionaries from human eyes," etc., they winked 

 at anti-Christian riots, and read and circulated the unspeakable 

 Deathblow to Corrupt Doctrines ; and in all these things, they seem 

 to have been sincere, as scores of them proved practically in 1900 ; but 

 also by this time many of them knew better, as is proved by the issue 

 of this Kiao Ou Ki Lio in 1905. As it has been said, the aim of 

 the work is a practical one. Its primary appeal is not to the 

 archaeologist, the sociologist, the historian, but to lawyers, law-makers, 

 administrators and diplomats. Of the 159 pages of the book proper, 

 all but 22 are taken up with Memorials to the Throne, Edicts, Treaties 



