MISSIONARIES AND EMANCIPATORS.
By Editor
THE American people have been taught by the church that the saving of the souls of the heathen by missionary effort is a work of divine beneficence and glory. It is but a step to the belief that in setting free an oppressed and misgoverned people we are likewise engaged in a work of humanity likely to find favor in the eyes of the Lord, and to be fully justified by its benefits. Every year we send out many devoted men and women to rescue the untaught heathen from the night of paganism and idolatry. We spend millions of dollars in the work. We are exhorted to believe that it is sinful to loll on the comfortable cushions of our fashionable churches, or to enjoy in selfish content the privileges of a religious education here at home, while countless thousands know not the way to salvation. Is it not also wrong, and an evidence of hard-heartedness, for us to go to town meeting, or send our neighbors to the Legislature or Congress to make laws that serve to protect our rights as freemen, without ever taking thought about the helpless, downtrodden victims of the despot's sway in distant lands, where taxes are imposed by the king's hirelings and collected by the whip, where the writ of habeas corpus does not run, and where no jury is ever impaneled? . . . To the mass of the people, and generally to the government, our missionaries are unwelcome wherever they go. In Turkey their property was destroyed, and in China the natives are killing them. As the sultan, after much dunning, puts off the payment of the indemnity promised for the destroyed property, it has been seriously proposed that we send war-ships to compel payment; that is, we must kill the Turks and destroy their cities in order to force upon them, against their wish, our missionaries, who teach religious beliefs upon which they look with horror. In China we have actually landed an armed force to avert the consequences of the disturbance due to the presence of the missionaries. And the forces of the nations are forming to preserve order there, an undertaking which it is confidently expected will end in the overthrow of the Chinese Empire.