“ONLY CHRISTIANS MAY PERSECUTE.”
The following, with the above heading, is taken from the Detroit News; it well illustrates what every well-informed man knows; namely, that there are no Christian governments or nations of this world. It also shows that the troubles between Turks and Armenians are largely political, tho doubtless many true Christians have suffered because of the inconsistencies of political professed Christians. The article is worth thinking about:— Here is a bit of curious information which comes to us by way of the London Times. It is curious, not so much in itself, as in what Captain Bunsby would call “the application on’t”:— “The Turkestan Gazette hears from Viernoe that the minister of the interior and the minister of foreign affairs have given permission for American missionaries to take refuge on Russian territory from the violence of the Chinese populace, on the express condition, however, that they are not to prosecute their religious propaganda among Russian subjects, and not to interfere in any way in matters of creed and faith.” It does not occur to the London Times to comment on this with the obvious suggestion that if the American missionaries had complied in China with the conditions which the Russian authorities impose on them in Russian territory, they would have had no occasion to fly from “the violence of the Chinese populace.” The Times and all other organs in Christian countries save their indignation against religious intolerance for the offenses of non-Christian countries and governments like China and Turkey. Christian governments, it would appear, may persecute Christians as they please, and prohibit missionary work among their subjects under penalty of imprisonment or other punishment, but the same privilege is denied to the Turk and Chinese, who certainly should be more excusable. The Russian Government does not permit any sect to attempt the conversion of orthodox Russians in any part of the empire, and neither England, France, Austria, nor the United States says a word against it. The Chinese and Turkish Governments have been compelled, by the Christian powers, at the mouth of the cannon, to permit foreign missionaries to proselytize their subjects, and to do their best to protect these missionaries in their work. When either of them fails in a single instance, and popular fury defeats their best efforts in that direction, the whole Christian world is in a blaze of fury, war is threatened, navies are moved to the ports of the offending country, and the press shrieks for vengeance upon the “unspeakable Turk” and the brutal and pagan Chinese. This little incident admirably illustrates the utter hollowness and hypocrisy of the whole diplomatic bobbery about the cruelties of the Turks and Chinese to the Christian populations among them. If China and Turkey were as powerful as Russia, there would not be so much as a protest; nor, even as they are, weak and helpless, would there be any diplomatic trouble about it, but for the fact that the good Christian governments of Europe wish to steal something from them, and to find in the persecution of Christians a pious excuse for any robbery they may be able to perpetrate. When Russia has taken Armenia from Turkey there will be no persecution of foreign missionaries there, for they will not be permitted to enter the country at all, and no one will make the slightest complaint.