"PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE."
THE new Chinese minister to the United States, Wu Ting Fang, is said to be the most learned envoy ever sent to represent the Chinese Empire. He recently wrote an article, published in the Sunday Examiner of May 7, touching on the two countries and their misunderstandings. Here is an extract, the truth and wisdom of which Christians will do well to ponder:— The most important questions with which the Chinese Government has to deal, arise from the spirit of commercialism and the spirit of proselytism. In all the treaties which China has concluded with western powers there is an article generally known as the "toleration clause." This article provides, in effect, that Christianity inculcates the practise of virtue and that those professing or teaching it should not be harassed or persecuted. This apparently innocent provision has not, however, helped to further the cause of Christianity in China. It must be borne in mind that this official recognition of Christianity was first obtained from her after a disastrous war. The clause was no doubt inserted with the best of intentions. But it had the apparent effect of exciting in the native mind the unfounded suspicion that a deep-laid political object was intended under the cover of religion. But let us put the shoe on the other foot and suppose that Confucian missionaries were sent by the Chinese to foreign lands, with the avowed purpose of gaining proselytes, and that these missionaries established themselves in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and other cities, and that they built temples, held public meetings and opened schools. It would not be strange if they should gather around them a crowd of men, women and children of all classes and conditions. If they were to begin their work by making vehement attacks on the doctrines of Christianity, denouncing the cherished institutions of the country, or going out of their way to ridicule the fashions of the day, and perhaps giving a learned discourse on the evil effects of corsets upon the general health of American women, it is most likely that they would be pelted with stones, dirt, and rotten eggs for their pains. What would be the consequences if, instead of taking hostile demonstrations of this character philosophically, they should lose their temper, call in the aid of the police, and report the case to the government at Washington for official interference? I verily believe that such action would render the missionaries so obnoxious to the American people as to put an end to their usefulness, and that the American Government would cause a law to be enacted against them as public nuisances. Can it be wondered at, then, that now and then we hear of riots occurring against missionaries in China, notwithstanding the precautionary measures taken by the local authorities to protect them? But all this good sense is taught in the Golden Rule.