It is Now a State Affair.
(From the Chicago Journal.) The field secretary of the Presbyterian board of foreign missions, the Rev. Thomas Marshall, has expressed an opinion upon the Chinese situation that, if lacking the goriness and intolerance of the recent utterances of Bishop Cranston, is at least unhappy in its phraseology. “The church believes,” says Mr. Marshall, “that the government should enforce its treaty rights, and when it does we shall take advantage of the opportunity to preach the gospel.” Religion, standing amid rice fields strewn with Chinese slain, calls upon the survivors to repent ere they share a like fate. That is the picture suggested by the words of the field secretary; and it is an unpleasant picture. Just at this stage of the proceedings “enforcement of treaty rights” means shot and shell. Mr. Marshall tells us that the church is watching with approving eye the flight of the shells and the smoke of the volley-firing, ready, as soon as a silence falls upon the battlefield, to rush in and preach the gospel; or, as Mr. Marshall puts it, “to take advantage of the opportunity.” This attitude of the church militant is not even heroic; it lacks even the courage of the old crusaders, who did not wait until the heathen host had been soundly thrashed and cowed by a third party before they began their peculiar style of injecting the gospel. Another of Mr. Marshall’s sayings is that “the Chinese can not stop the work of civilization and evangelization which has stirred up the anti-foreign element of the orient.” The church at large will hardly thank Mr. Marshall for the frank confession contained in that defiant sentence. Indeed, the church at large will not thank him for anything he has said that we have quoted, any more than it thanked Bishop Cranston for his sanguinary utterances; for they reflect discredit upon the whole missionary system. This is an excellent time for the missionaries to refrain from offering advice or encouragement to the sword of the nation. What was mainly a church affair has become wholly an affair of state.